736493

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Medieval Instrumental Dance Music Author(s): Joan Rimmer Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 72, No. 1 (Feb., 1991), pp. 61-68Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/736493Accessed: 20-11-2015 04:55 UTC

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MEDIEVAL INSTRUMENTAL DANCE MUSIC

BY JOAN RIMMER

COMPARED with historical musicologists, dance historians have been thin on the ground and often particular in standpoint. For example, Curt Sachs, who is not known personally to have set foot to floor in any serious sense, produced a World Hzstory of the Dance (Eng. trans., New York, 1937), using a methodology reminiscent of the magisterial classificatory systems of his earlier profession as a curator of musical instrument collections in Berlin and Cairo. The Geschichte der Tanzkunst by the Polish dance-master Albert Czerwinski (Leip- zig, 1862) was concerned only with Antiquity and Europe, but it was written with technical mastery of much contemporary dance. Though both were concerned with the practice of dance, they provided very few notations of dance music. The reverse is the case with TimothyJ. McGee's collection of western European dance music,' which contains 36 pages of text and five illustrations, followed by 121 pages of music notations and thirteen pages of notes on these. In a short preface McGee writes modestly: 'This edition contains all the compositions known or suspected to be instrumental dances from before ca. 1430 . . . I view this book ... not as the definitive writing on medieval instrumental dance music, but as a somewhat speculative study along the way to a complete understanding'.

From the consumer's point of view, there are two distinct products here -the hard stuff in the shape of the notations and illustrations, and the author's speculative views in the preceding text and the notes. The text is presented in four sections: 'Dance in the Middle Ages', 'The Repertory of Textless Dances', 'Dancing' and 'Performance Practice', the last referring to musical, not dance performance. Having in one volume a considerable part of the known body of notated dance music from before 1430 will no doubt save many students of musicology much preliminary scrabbling through a number of different and not always easily accessible publications; these, whether of facsimiles or of earlier transcriptions, are listed individually for each item. This comparatively inexpensive production, printed on sturdy paper and spiral-bound, amply allows for the scribbling in of personal disagreements with the transcriptions given here. As dance music, however, it is another matter, since these 48 notations are unhelpful to the choreographically uninformed. Pitch, rhythmic interpretation and recurrence order (the last not always accurate) are here, as well as a 'counting unit' for each item, though its overall metrical significance is not defined. But of choreometric structure or style there is no hint.

A lack of foot-on-floor reality pervades the text, too. The author pertinently points out that iconographical material is a neglected source of information not only about earlier music practice but also about dance. One must nevertheless add that its usefulness depends to a great extent on the recognition bank of the present-day viewer. McGee's recognition bank appears to be minimally stocked. He cautiously admits that Plate 3, an Italian fresco of c. 1420, may not depict dancing, merely a procession. In fact, it seems to be an allegory of a woman's life from girlhood to old age. To the sound of a pair of long trumpets, a pair of shawms and nakers, she first proceeds on her father's right arm, a slender girl with hair braided down her back; then on the left arm of an exquisitely dressed youth, presumably her betrothed; then as an elegantly-hatted married woman on her husband's arm, followed by herself, bonneted in middle age and on the arm of a young man, perhaps her son; and finally a sad, heavy and downcast figure in black on the arm of a middle-aged man, perhaps her son in maturity. Plate 4, illustrating a scene in the Garden of Delight from Le Roman de la

Medieval Instrumental Dances, ed. Timothy J. McGee. (Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indiana- polis, 1989, $27.50. ISBN 0-253-33353-9.)

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rose, shows no social dancing at all. To the right, a young man, with a monkey tethered at his feet, plays a mandora, while a tornatrix, with hair tightly bunched up as her act required (and still does) balances on her hands. (In a single paragraph, the author identifies this performer first as a young girl and then as a youth.) Further right is another kind of performer, one who assumed curious or dangerous poses, sometimes on the shoulders of a man. Here, a little girl, with hair bunched up like the tumbler, balances on the shoulders of a woman and imitates the pose of a woman performer who stands facing her. On the left, two young girls whisper and embrace. A male figure, feet wide apart, grasps two more young women by the wrists, apparently urging them towards a winged and coroneted figure, while two mature musicians sit in the background, playing rebec and harp. The frontispiece depicts a dance in the Garden of Mirth, from a fourteenth-century copy of Le Roman de la rose, and Plates 1 and 2 show details from moralistic frescoes by Andrea Bonaiuto (1365) and Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1337-9). McGee interprets the group of four in Plate 4 (winged figure included) and also the figures in the frontispiece and Plates 1 and 2 as 'dancers holding hands in small groups, making graceful movements with their feet close to the floor'. He adds that 'the line of text beneath the frontispiece speaks of dancing the carol. But the dances in the other picture are not identified.' In fourteenth-century Florence and Siena, no identification would have been needed; these were current dance types, and they are still identifiable.

Leaving aside for the moment whether or not there was any such thing as 'the carol', these three depictions cover a considerable stretch of time. The text of Le Roman de la rose was created in the thirteenth century, part before c. 1240 and part about 40 years later. The copy from which this illustration was taken was made a hundred years later still. It can be interpreted as a conflation of some of the several activities mentioned in the text on the same page. But it might depict something perhaps more characteristic of the late fourteenth century than of the early thirteenth century, namely, a carole en ligne not actually sung by the participants but performed, textlessly, on two shawms and a bagpipe acting as surrogates for the alternating voices of the entire company and the carole leader. Apart from the leader's feet being shown in reverse, with the right foot leading instead of the left (this is cor- rectly shown in the case of the other four participants), this seems a reasonably accurate depiction of a point in the single branle step pattern. The right foot, which takes only the subsidiary weight shifts for the first and second beats of each unit, is exactly in place to take the light backward shift on the third beat. The erect carriage and decorous balancing link between participants (right hand facing down over your neighbour's left hand facing up, and the reverse for your left hand) are also clearly shown.2

Naturally, there is greater detail in the big Italian frescoes, which have symbolic significance but are realistically painted. The scene in Lorenzetti's The Effects of Good Government in the City (Plate 1) is a large open space in Siena, with citizens of many kinds going about their own affairs in the street, or overlooking it from within doors. In the centre, nine well-dressed and well-coiffed young women, linked by the little fingers of each hand, dance a branle en ligne to the singing of a somewhat older woman who also defines the dance metres with a large tambourine. McGee describes the formation as 'under the bridge'. It is, however, what is commonly known as Threading the Needle, one of the three figures of this farandole type of dance. The line is on a labyrinthine track and the leader and second dancer have just broken from it to form the single-armed arch under which the rest will go.3 This is essentially a communal dance, performable by many more people than are shown in Lorenzetti's picture and needing the kind of space available out of doors. These in- nocent dances of young girls were obviously acceptable to civic authority, whereas more ebullient dance manifestations, such as those at Carnival, were less so. It is significant that in the companion fresco, entitled The Effect of Good Government in the Country, no recreational activity is shown, only orderly labour. In the agricultural cycle, the major ritual occasions for dance-spring, midsummer and midwinter-were not necessarily associated with public order.

2 This has a specific connotation in the physical balance and stability of a communal ring or line. I In Fra Angelico's The Last Judgement, the dance of angels and the blessed is shown at exactly the same point.

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The detail from the huge, Dominican-orientated fresco depicting the Church Militant, in the chapel of S. Maria Novella, Florence (Plate 2), is taken from the section depicting a number of earthly pleasures. There is social and choreographic exactitude here, too, for the two groups of dancers are engaged in very different kinds of dance. To the left, a group of four -two young men and two girls -are engaged in a carole en ronde, the open-mouthed young man at the right being the leader. They have the same erect carriage as the group in the little illustration from Le Roman de la rose, but, like the girls in Siena, they are linked by crooked little fingers. This is also the link between a man and two girls at the right, and, again like the girls in Siena, they are dancing to the singing of a separate woman with a large tambourine. This, however, is no communal carole of ancient lineage but a highly personal dance. The dancers' demeanour has a hint of aiere as spelt out in Italian dance-masters' books of two generations later, where there are also many choreographed examples of uneven-sex dances with their undertones of ritualized rivalry.4

Timothy McGee's interpretation of his five illustrations is simplistic to a degree un- thinkable in any other academic field, and it is not difficult to see why. Dance history is no armchair subject, and it has not yet begotten as large a corpus of literature as has medieval music. But even in the musical field, McGee seems heavily dependent on previous writings. His text is curiously organized. Discussion of the notated items in the section entitled 'The Repertory of Textless Dances' is sandwiched between the very brief and generalized sections 'Dance in the Middle Ages' and 'Dancing'. While the latter, presented as a speculative sum- ming up, is little more than three pages long, the notes to the text up to that point fill six and a half pages in small type. Tail wagging dog? Or just the impossibility of distilling anything choreographically concrete from a mass of largely musicological material? The author has already produced an original study of some musical aspects of one collection,' and, with certain reservations, the transcriptions given here are a useful addition to any working library. But appending to them a minuscule speculative study on the vast subject of dance in western Europe over more than three centuries seems an unrealistic exercise, particularly when the author has not only omitted some primary factors from his considera- tions but appears to be unaware of their relevance. Transcribing medieval notations of dance music-or indeed notations of any unfamiliar dance music-meaningfully into twentieth-century symbols needs more than just cracking the notational codes; one must also attempt to crack the choreometric codes enshrined in music and/or texts, whether dance functional or not, and something of the behavioural codes of which dance habits were, and still are, a significant component.

There is also the matter of reasonably exact definition of what is being discussed and of reasonably precise terminology. It could no doubt be claimed that the concepts and terms employed have been hallowed by generations of use among literary scholars and musicologists. But following the disappearance of some of the activities which they once denoted clearly, and dilutions or distortions of meaning or looser applications, a good many of them now mean different things to different people.6 None of McGee's distinguished writers referred to in the extensive notes faced squarely the crunch problem in retrospective investigation of Western medieval dance and dance music, namely, the relationship between dance metre, prosody and systems of assembling, and in some cases also decorating, appropriate units of music. What is at issue here is not 'sophisticated art music matching the theoretical descriptions of the formal design of the earlier dance compositions, although rarely exhibiting the kind of melodic and rhythmic patterns that would suggest the dances described in the earlier literary and theoretical accounts', as Timothy McGee describes his later items. It is, rather, a system of lego-building with several kinds of material simultaneously. Like most durable systems, it was operable short and plain or long and

See Antonius Arena, 'Leges Dansandi/Rules of Dancing', original text with trans. byJohn Gtithrie & Marino Zorzi, Dance Research, iv/2 (Autumn 1986), 14, on fifteenth-century etiquette when dancin1g with two girls.

5 Timothy J. McGee, 'Eastern Influences in Medieval European Dance Music', Cross-Cultural Perspectives in Music, ed. Robert Falck & Timothy Rice, Toronto, 1982, pp. 79, 100.

6 See Sir Jack Westrup, 'Parodies and Parameters', Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, c (1973-4), 19-31, for general discussion of this in musical terminology.

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fancy. When first written down in the twelfth century, it must already have been well estab- lished, and in some conservative regions of Europe, including the periphery of the British Isles, it survived well into the seventeenth century.

Throughout the short discussions, there seems to be no clear perception of the elements involved in dance or how they are analysed, and no assessment of the character and view- point of the authors quoted or referred to or of the original function of their writings. Dance types are distinguished as round, carol and estampie, even though these are not comparable categories. 'Round' is a floor pattern. The English term 'carol' no longer has the same meaning as carole, for which it was once the English equivalent, and in any medieval context it is prudent to stick to the old French term. Briefly put, carole was the combination of particular kinds of spatial pattern and particular kinds of group-to-individual relationships in music and text, with particular kinds of social function.' Estampie, on the other hand, was a specific dance type. Moreover, it was not communal like carole, but for a single couple or couples in sequence, and earlier, sometimes an exhibitionist solo man's dance. It is the first recorded western European dance type with what is known as a 'front', that is, danced first forwards towards a personage or point then in reverse back to the starting-place, a floor pattern exactly paralleled in the open and closed forms of each section of estampie-reiated music. In some caroles, certain step sequences in mixed dance metres could fit with various recurrence patterns of text-plus-music.8 In estampie, a dance type which was always in mixed metres, identical choreometric patterns are very rare;9 this was the difficult social dance, needing personal concentration.

The eleven pages on 'The Repertory of Textless Dances' contain the only analytical discussion in the preliminary text. But without any real perception of what might be called the structural mechanics of dance music and of the parameters of tempo outside which it makes no physical sense at all, the author tends to see similarities where none exist and fails to see some that do exist. It is unhelpful to point out that 'The French estampies have relatively short puncta of eight to twenty units of measure and are in triple meter, while in the Italian source they vary in length from twenty to over a hundred units of measure and are all in duple subdivision' if you do not establish whether those subdivisions are primary or secondary in relation to the dance metres, or indeed how the chosen unit of measure relates to them. Simply counting totals of units of measure is in itself no more revealing of dance or music metre than syllable or foot counting is revealing of verse metre; the significant point is how they hang together. In terms of design (and the author uses this in a purely musical sense) it is not true to say that the Italian estampies are more complex than the French: the author has merely failed to identify various kinds of complexity. The formal principles of French estampie are presented as each punctum consisting of 'completely new melodic material followed by a common open and closed endings that act as its refrain', 0 Ax/y Bx/y etc. The thirteen dances in the Chansonnier du Roi, from which most of the French items in McGee's book are taken, get, on the whole, simpler. The last of all, from the fourteenth- century part of the manuscript and called simply Danse, can be plotted that way, though in choreometrical terms it is necessary to refine it to ABx/y CDx/y etc. But the single frag- ment which is all that remains of the first Estampie Royal can be plotted thus:

Al + B3 C8 D4 E4 F... G2 + B3 H4 D4 J5 F...

And using 'w' to represent a constant pre-cadential formula, the first and fourth puncta of the second Estampie Royal are:

7 See Joan Rimmer, 'Carole, Rondeau and Branle in Ireland 1300-1800, Part 1: The Walling of New Ross and Dance Texts in the Red Book of Ossory', Dance Research, vii/I (Spring 1989), 25-26.

8 See idem, 'Dance Elements in Trouvere Repertory', Dance Research, iii/2 (Summer 1985), 30-31, for one example.

9 McGee's suggestion that 'the French estampies were probably of the generic, unchoreographed type' is not well founded, since he has not recognized the nature of their choreometric changes.

0 The use of this term in connection with estampze and some other medieval dance forms is inappropriate.

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1. A4 B4 w4 x6 /y7 4. G6 H5

The kind of ground-plan in the second Estampie Royal, consisting of changing initial modules, a constant pre-cadential formula and open and closed forms of a cadential unit, was followed in some of the Italian estampies, though the melodic languages of the Italian pieces are very different from the older French ones. It is literally a ground-plan, for it defines time -and therefore space -for thFe advancing section and for the returning section. Moreover, in the constant pre-cadential formula, it has a signal that the dancers are at a certain point from the end of the section, and if they have miscalculated the size of their steps in relation to the available dance track, they can still adjust them to ensure turning and finishing at appropriate spots. "

In notating any kind of music, whether from live performance or partly or wholly from memory, or even when copying from existing notation, one lurking pitfall is the indication of the recurrence of modules which it is both laborious and unnecessary to write out in full every time. Both the Italian notations and Timothy McGee's edition contain a sprinkling of mishits, as do the editions of some of his predecessors. For example, the ground-plan of Isabella is:

1. A4 B5 C1 +D2 w3+2 C1 +E3 F1 +G2 H2 F1 +J5 x3/y5 2. K1+2+2 L3+12 .. .. .. .. 3. M9 N7 .. 4. 07 + 2 P7 Q14 .. .. .. ..

(italics indicate changes of dance metre not specified in detail here)

The lengths of the puncta in this estampie imply a long dance track, with greater possibilities for spatial miscalculation than a shorter one; but the music has built-in signals. The changing initial modules are through-composed, while the long cadential unit has balanced repetitions. One would need cloth ears and two left feet to miss this. In McGee's edition of this item, the pre-cadential module and the first three modules of the long cadential unit itself are omitted from the second and fourth puncta; the second goes straight from L to F +J and the fourth straight from Q to F +J, thus making nonsense of this superbly crafted choreo-musical structure. The note to this estampie reads: 'The opening bars of this dance consist only of a single note, played at decreasing durations. The performer may wish to elaborate on this by incorporating it into a prelude, extending the phrase, and gradually increasing the speed of the single note until it reaches tempo.' Within the constraints of general or local consensus, people may indeed do as they please with almost any kind of music. But this suggestion seems to follow from non-appreciation of the choreometric structure of this particular dance music and of the parameters of tempo which are implied. That 'single note, played at decreasing durations' is the firmly rhythmic start of the firmly rhythmic first module, which is cast in the principal dance metre of this estampie and of many others.

The three paired dances (Lamento di Tristano and La Manfredina, both with a following rotta, and a Danqa Amorosa with a following troto) are constructed on different patterns from the estampies. They are rhythmically much simpler and do not necessarily imply performance by single couples on a forward and back dance track. The first dance in each pair is in one dance metre throughout, and the after dance is in a different one. This degree of simplicity is the antithesis of estampie, where some of the metrical changes can involve complex footwork. All three dances are in manuscripts of Italian provenance, but there are hints of acculturation. Tristan's Lament and its rotta are followed in the manuscript by La Man- fredina and its rotta, and it could perhaps be surmised that the Italian piece was a local essay somewhat after the manner of the previous one, whose origins seem to be far distant from fourteenth-century Italy. La Manfredina is in the same dance metre as Tristan's Lament, and it has similar rhythmic patterns and even bits of Tristan's melodic line. Its

" See Arena, op. cit., p. 21, for etiquette in the case of miscalculation in dancing basses danses.

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internal structure, however, is not convoluted and it lacks the flowing melodic arches of the previous piece:

Lamento di Tristano Rotta La Manfredina & Rotta 1. Ai) Aii) B Ci) x/y A x/y 1. A w/z 2. Cii) .. .. .. .. C .. 2. B x/z 3. Ciii) .. .. .. .. D .. 3. C y/z

(in McGee's edition, ABC in the second punctum of Tristan's Lament is omitted)

There are hints of regional acculturations in other items also. Of the four fragments used as tenors for thirteenth-century motets (Chose Tassin 1, 2 and 3 and Chose Loyset), McGee remarks that 'They were probably not dances in the form we find them here . . . the pieces do not seem to possess the regularity of rhythm usually associated with the other dance melodies or dance tenors included in this publication'. But all these are single puncta of estampie, one punctum at a slowed-down tempo providing sufficient material around which learnedly to contrive a motet. All consist of a constant unit followed by open and closed cadential units, and all have choreometric changes. Tassin was apparently a notable dancer of long estampies, and the three separate puncta which bear his name are each on a different pattern, two fairly straightforward and one more complicated. Loyset's is a miniature on the same kind of choreometric plan as one of Tassin's. But of the four thirteenth-century English pieces in this volume, only two have much connection with estampie in the French sense, and even they are assembled on a micro-system like that in the other two.'2 Like the dances in the Channsonnier du Roi, the three in Harley 978 are progressively simpler. Unlike them, they have no choreometrical changes (this might make them ductia inJohan- nes de Grocheo's sense). In the lower of the two parts, the first of the three follows the overall pattern for a single punctum of estampie, with a constant unit having open and closed endings. That unit, however, is made from repeated smaller units which themselves consist of tiny motifs, first open and then closed:

'As/t :11 2Bu/w :11 I Cx/yclCX/ZOP V 4

:11 S

- :11 6. CX/yC II

The numbers 1-6 merely define successive modules, each lasting less than ten seconds at dancing tempo; together, they make a single dance routine. The second and third dances also have an additional part throughout, but the function here may have been more than merely decorative. The second is made from repetitions of only two tiny modules, the same length as in the previous item. But the second time round, they are pitched a fifth higher than before, with the added part now below. Since the added parts are learnedly contrived, this may have been no more than a device for making listening music from small dance music (whose effect in its original context and dancing length would have been physical and cumulative), a parallel, perhaps, to the present-day habit of shifting successive verses of a popular song or dance tune up by a tone or semitone. But in practice, the shift gives a different tonal end to its section, open where it had previously been closed. This is the reverse of the pattern of a punctum of estampie. It suggests that the complete dance routine was perhaps not just the four sections as numbered, but a minimum of six, with a da capo, and the actual end at the closed form of the second module. At a reasonable performing length, this would mean many alterations of AABx/y and AABx/z, finishing with the closed By, and the spatial implication of communal dance on a round floor pattern:

FINE 'Ai) :11 2Bxi)/yCIl 11 'Aii) :11 4Bxii)/z0P 11 D.C.

The third dance is made from only one module, first open and then closed, played five times. This is pitched a fifth higher in the last three, again with the added part now below. At this degree of simplicity, processional seems the most likely floor pattern. One could

2 There are traces of this in some archaic modules incorporated into English dance tunes first notated in the seventeenth century and in a few Welsh pieces notated in the eighteenth century. It was still a viable method of con- struction in the Gaelic regions of Scotland and Ireland until the end of the seventeenth century.

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surmise that this sequence of items might represent the actual dancing order. First, the more difficult foreign dance, albeit in a simplified form; then a communal round dance, perhaps with intermittent figures; and finally a processional or promenade off.

The single dance from Douce 139 seems a more hybrid affair, its structure obscured by the scribe's arbitrary numbering and possibly a small omission in the notation of the penultimate module. Though numbered 1 to 10, it is actually in three sections. The first is simply three statements of one module open and closed, the closed form being made by an addition to the open form, not by a substitution; the only difference between the three statements is in the first note, successively A, C and F. The second section has two modules, each open and closed. All these are slightly longer than in the dances in the other manuscript. The third section consists of a single module played three times, with slightly different figuration each time, and a new module with a closed cadential unit; then the previous module, slightly expanded, played twice, followed by another new module but with the same cadential unit. The whole routine is rounded off with a repeated coda, to which parts are added above and below in the repeat:

1. 'As/s+t I I I/ I I-/ 2. 4Bu/w I 5Cx/y 11 3. 6D D 7D SEzcI 11 9D+ D + I F*zCI 11 IG :11 (*two notes seem to be omitted here)

This looks like an insular acculturation of estampze. There are three distinct puncta, but the first two, assemblages of tiny open and closed motifs like the dance tunes in Harley 978, are not on an estampie kind of pattern. The third comes closer; but the constant unit has uneven repetitions, the pre-cadential unit is different in each half, while the cadential unit is identically closed each time. There are, however, touches of mixed dance metre at the same points as in some French estampies, and in the coda there seems to be something like a fid- dler's postlude, of the very kind Timothy McGee speculates about in his remarks on performance practices.

The earliest music to which an estampie-type name has been attached is Kalenda Maya, and this is the first item in McGee's notations. The medieval tale was that Raimbaut de Va- queiras made a text to it after hearing it played by two jongleurs, but the only known notation of the music dates from nearly a hundred years after Raimbaut's death in the first decade of the thirteenth century. Putting text and music together does not constitute what the author calls 'vocal estampie' any more than putting the text 'Land of Hope and Glory' to part of one of Elgar's exercises in Pomp and Circumstance constitutes a 'vocal march'. The music is in three sections. However interpreted rhythmically, it implies changing choreographic patterns; and if the notation is interpreted literally and in choreometric terms, rather than according to formulas which may be validly applicable to quite other musical constructs, those patterns are complex in a rather different way from most estam- pzes. Raimbaut's text consists of five stanzas, each of which is made on the complete three- section dance routine, which may itself have been only one punctum of a longer estampida. The context is clear from the very first line. This was one of the spring dances, a male exhibitionist solo (as, presumably, were those of Tassin and Loyset) here safely within the formal confines of courtoisie. At the end of the final stanza, the poet reminds his patron, the Marquis of Montferrat, that he has now 'constructed and finished the estampida'. It was at the court at Montferrat that Raimbaut heard the prototype (and no doubt saw it danced). Had the marquis or one of his courtiers made a wager that the poet would not be able to make an extended poem on such a complex pattern?

The text consistently reveals rhythmic subtleties (no doubt manifest in the original performance), which the musical notation, incapable of signalling metacrusis in tiny modules, could not. These text details also make choreometric sense, altogether in keeping with the character of a solo dance with intricate footwork:

ABwi)c' /wii)c'- CXoP /wi0)C1. DEycl /zcl.

(diacrusis in B and C)

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Souvent Souspire, which follows Kalenda Maya in this edition, is generally thought to be on a similar pattern. It has, however, a much simpler text, only the simplest change in dance metre, and a different tonal plan:

Ac' :11 Bc1 :11 C B C D0P 11

Timothy McGee suggests that in both cases the last two lines, which he calls a refrain, should be repeated. This would deform the structure and the dramatic shape of both items.

He questions whether the two Czech items (Czaldy Waldy) were in fact dance music, but states that they have two partes and are written in black notes, 'thus conforming to the basic format of the basse danse'. The only thing these two Czech dances have in common is that their first module is open and all the others are closed. One is smooth and elegantly balanced. Its modular plan and rhythmic pattern seem unusual compared with western European notated dances, but they may not have been unusual in central Europe:

ABx0P' AAyCl 11 Cy* Dy Cy 11

(*defective notation)

The other is a more boisterous affair, through-composed in four modules with identical dance metre in each except for the third. Its motor impulse and rhythmic patterns recall some of the quick duple-time dances which have lasted into this century in parts of Bohemia, particularly wedding dances. There is little chance of knowing why these two items were committed to writing in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. But bear- ing in mind the ritual and conservative character of music for rites of passage, weddings among them, one could imagine the elegant one as the ritual dance of a newly married couple, followed by the lively one for all the company.

In terms of presentation, is it not time that authors refrained from using the historic present in print? While it may have some use in classroom discussion on specific points or viewpoints, in print it conflates centuries and dissipates all sense of chronology. Jerome of Moravia, Johannes de Grocheo and others do not 'tell us'; they wrote of particular times and in particular circumstances. If technical evidence about dance from the twelfth century onwards is taken into account, it seems clear that, while some highly learned and literate people were personally and intimately acquainted with contemporary social dances, others were less so; but it was the latter who were more likely to put their opinions into written form. SirJack Westrup remarked that 'elegant description is not the same as definition, but it is not always easy to separate the two'. 3 One may add that, in any historical field, some attempt to define the nature of past describers is desirable, and that relevant tools of analysis are essential. Where physical techniques of any kind are involved, some degree of realistic acquaintance with them is equally essential. Timothy McGee's book is indeed speculative; he has speculated in areas where at least some facts are known and failed to speculate con- structively in others where they are not. It is not a focused study. Most fundamentally, he has failed to recognize that social dance and its music (however the latter may be executed) are Siamese twins. In the field of research into the history of dance, besides being literate and 'noterate' it is necessary also to be 'canterate' and 'moterate'.

I Westrup, op. cit., p. 30.

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