Decorum of the Minuet, Delirium of the Waltz

A Study of Dance-Music Relations in 3/4 Time

Eric McKee

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780253356925
• eBook ISBN: 9780253028044
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Theory & Appreciation

An investigation of dance-music relations in two out of the three most influential social dances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Much music was written for the two most important dances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the minuet and the waltz. In Decorum of the Minuet, Delirium of the Waltz, Eric McKee argues that to better understand the musical structures and expressive meanings of this dance music, one must be aware of the social contexts and bodily rhythms of the social dances upon which it is based. McKee approaches dance music as a component of a multimedia art form that involves the interaction of physical motion, music, architecture, and dress. Moreover, the activity of attending a ball involves a dynamic network of modalities—sight, sound, bodily awareness, touch, and smell, which can be experienced from the perspectives of a dancer, a spectator, or a musician. McKee considers dance music within a larger system of signifiers and points-of-view that opens new avenues of interpretation. "McKee's book... fulfils its aim: that of presenting dance-music relations in two out of three of the most popular ballroom dances in several centuries. To my knowledge, there is no other English publication on such intersection of topics—thus it deserves a place in the libraries of music and dance departments." —Gediminas Karoblis, Dance Research "I think this is an important book for musicians and dance academics alike, since McKee proposes that to understand the musical structures of the minuet and waltz, "it is helpful to be aware of the bodily rhythms of the dance upon which they are based and the social contexts in which they were performed".... McKee's holistic approach illuminates the total experiences of all the participants.... highly informative on the importance of dancing at every level of society, and its varying social functions, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." — Dance Europe "McKee's overall orientation is laudable, since functional dance music has largely been ignored by music analysts, and stylized dance music has been treated as if it had minimal connection to the practice of dancing.... Despite the amount of close music analysis, McKee's writing is accessible to a wide range of readers.... One hopes that McKee has plans for a future book to follow the mid-century delirium of the waltz to its twentieth-century demise." — Nineteenth-Century Music Review

1^st

Influences of the Early Eighteenth-Century Ballroom Minuet on the Minuets from J. S. Bach’s French Suites, BWV 812–817

Cadence, which is the indispensable regulator of the Minuet, is also a rock against which many are dashed.

GENNARO MAGRI

Because of the prominence of social dancing in eighteenth-century social life, it would seem likely that musical features of Baroque ballroom dance types, and especially of the minuet, carried over into nondance genres and in some way influenced the formation of the Classical style, especially in regard to aspects of Classical phrase organization, such as periodicity and symmetrical formal designs based on repeating four- or eight-bar units. Leonard Ratner observes that “dance topics saturate the concert and theater music of the classic style; there is hardly a major work in this era that does not borrow heavily from the dance” (1980, 18). But beyond citing apparent similarities between dance music and Classical music, it becomes difficult to pinpoint the exact nature and level of the dance’s influence. Certainly, dance was not the only player in the formation of the Classical style. As Charles Rosen and others have pointed out, vocal music – both folk and art – also had a tremendous impact and may have influenced the formation of the Classical style as much or even more so than the dance.¹ Furthermore, many functional dances in the first half of the eighteenth century exhibited irregular phrase organizations, and we now know that in some social settings dancers did not even pay heed to the music’s melodic organization, let alone coordinate their footwork to it.² If this is true, then one cannot argue as convincingly for the practical necessity in dance music of one particular type of phrase organization over another. This, in turn, weakens the position that dance music provided the principal model for the development of phrase organization in Classical music.

Questions emerge. Just what was required of the music to make it danceable? How did the practical necessities of the dance affect the phrase organization of the music? And, perhaps most important, what might composers have learned from composing dance music? In addressing the first of these questions, this chapter begins by focusing on the practical aspects of one of the two most important social dances of the eighteenth century, the minuet – specifically, the ballroom version of the minuet, the menuet ordinaire.³

THE MINUET AS DANCED

The most common form of the social minuet (as opposed to theatrical minuets) was the menuet ordinaire, which was in vogue from the court of Louis XIV through to the end of the eighteenth century.⁴ The organizing component of the menuet ordinaire – and of all French court dances – is the “step-unit”: a collection of individual steps, hops, or springs involving at least two changes of weight from one foot to another. In the minuet, the principal step-unit is the pas de menuet, which contains four changes of weight, always beginning with the right foot (RLRL).⁵ The pas de menuet requires six beats in

time to complete and begins on the upbeat with a bending of the knees. The bending of the knees, often referred to as a “sink” or plié, prepares the dancer for a rise or spring on the downbeat.

Step-units were combined to form symmetrical floor patterns called “figures,” typically comprising four to eight step-units and thus requiring eight to sixteen bars of music to complete. Figure 1.1 reproduces a plate from Kellom Tomlinson’s 1735 treatise The Art of Dancing.⁶ It illustrates the standard succession of six figures for the menuet ordinaire: (1) the introduction, (2) the S reversed, (3) the presenting of the right arm, (4) the presenting of the left arm, (5) the S reversed, and (6) the presenting of both arms and conclusion.⁷ Each of the figures shown comprises eight dance steps, which Tomlinson has numbered (in very small print) within the figures. Since each figure comprises eight step-units, and the step-unit involves two bars, the eight-bar musical strains composed by Tomlinson for each figure would need to be repeated to conform to the sixteen-bar figures. Thus, in this particular diagram the large-scale melodic design is congruent with the figures of the dance. The entire dance is preceded by and concluded with reverences to the highest-ranking personages (seated at the top of the hall or dancing space) as well as to one’s partner. Tomlinson does not provide music for these gestures.

WHAT MAKES THE MUSIC DANCEABLE?

Most dance scholars are of the opinion that for minuet music to be danceable there needs to be some congruence between the musical organization and the choreography of the dance. Just where that congruence lies varies from scholar to scholar. On the one hand, Julia Sutton (1985, 125) believes that there was complete congruence between the music and the dance at all levels of structure. Tomlinson’s diagram of six minuet figures given in Figure 1.1 would appear to support her position. Assuming each of the eight-bar musical strains is repeated, the music and dance are closely aligned. Others, such as Wendy Hilton (1981, 293), Sarah Reichart (1984, 167), and Meredith Little and Natalie Jenne (1991, 69–70), allow for large-level conflicts between dance figures and musical strains while maintaining the need for congruence between the minuet’s steps and a consistent two-bar grouping in the phrase organization of the music. Tilden Russell (1983, 64), however, believes that “there was no one-to-one relation between the dance and the [phrase organization of the] music.” Echoing an earlier study by Karl Heinz Taubaut (1968, 169), Russell maintains that “the music provided a metrical rather than formal basis for the dance” (1983, 61–62). In a later article, Russell takes an even more extreme position, stating that “if asymmetry and irregularity are present in dance minuets at all structural levels, then presumably discrepancies were created with the dance at all structural levels, too, from the step to the figure to the length of the completed dance” (1999, 419).

FIGURE 1.1. Kellom Tomlinson’s diagram of the standard six figures for the menuet ordinaire (The Art of Dancing, London, 1735, Plate U). Reproduced with the permission of Rare Books and Manuscripts, Special Collections Library, the Pennsylvania State University Libraries.

In considering dance-music relations of the minuet, however, one must first consider the function and context of the dance: theatrical, pedagogical, ceremonial court balls, or more informal balls held outside of court.

As a general rule, when the dance and music were composed for a specific occasion or when a dancer was given prior notice as to what music would be played, there often was, as Sutton claims, complete agreement between the music and the dance. This situation would arise in the case of theatrical dances as well as many dances performed at formal court balls, where almost nothing was left to chance. Typically, only a select few of the invited guests were permitted to dance at formal balls; and as part of the preparations, a dancing master would choreograph and compose new dances for the ball and distribute them to the designated dancers for them to practice beforehand (Brainard 1986, 164). Clothing and, on occasion, even hairstyles were prearranged for the dancers as well (Harris-Warrick 1986, 44).

Although there were exceptions, minuets included in pedagogical treatises were almost always choreographed to fit the music exactly, as Tomlinson’s diagram illustrates.⁸ Here the six dance figures are accompanied by a tune in simple binary form

repeated three times, yielding a six-part design

that perfectly matches the six figures of the dance. In a series of fourteen ornately engraved plates, Tomlinson, within the same treatise, provides a beautiful and detailed iconographic display of the minuet’s choreography, combining dance notation, musical notation, and depictions of dancers at specific points in the choreography of the minuet’s figures.⁹ Figure 1.2 reproduces one of the plates. The tune that provides the accompaniment for the dancers in the series of plates, like the tune in Figure 1.1, is cast in simple binary form

and repeated three times in order to match the six figures

. After depicting the opening reverences, for which Tomlinson scores a musical fanfare, most of the plates depict either the first half or the second half of one of the six figures. As shown by the small numbers below the music of Figure 1.2, Tomlinson indicates the precise coordination of the four individual two-bar steps of the dancers to the music: each step – without exception in the entire series of plates – begins on an odd-numbered measure.¹⁰ Another way to think about the dance-music relations exhibited in Tomlinson’s multimedia display is that not only is there complete congruence between the dance figures and melodic organization, but, on a lower level, the minuet’s dance steps are also perfectly coordinated with the music’s two-bar hypermeter.¹¹

FIGURE 1.2. Kellom Tomlinson’s depiction of the minuet (The Art of Dancing, London, 1735, Plate XII). Reproduced with the permission of Rare Books and Manuscripts, Special Collections Library, the Pennsylvania State University Libraries.

There are two likely reasons for the close coordination of dance and music found in Tomlinson’s treatise and other eighteenth-century dance treatises. No doubt, dancing masters did not want to introduce any unneeded complexity that might overwhelm or confuse their students. Dancing masters typically accompanied their students with a violin or a pochette, which was a small, pocket-size violin that easily allowed the dancing master to play a dance tune while demonstrating the steps or keeping a close eye on his students’ footwork. The ability to provide musical accompaniment thus enabled dancing masters to exercise control over all aspects of their teaching environment, which in many cases, as with Tomlinson, included the composition of their own dance tunes. The strong pedagogical association established between the minuet and a particular tune, however, could prove problematic. While visiting Paris in 1762, Leopold Mozart observed that “in the whole town there are about two or three favourite minuets, which must always be played, because the people cannot dance to any save those particular ones during the playing of which they learned to dance” (1966, 40–41).

The second reason for congruence between music and dance is that dancing masters likely approached the dances in their manuals as they did theatrical dances, where, given the opportunity to choreograph a dance to a specific tune, their natural inclination was to mold the dance around the tune or vice versa for those dancing masters who composed their own music. For example, in 1700 the dancing master Raoul-Auger Feuillet advertised in the preface to his La pavane des saisons that for a fee he would provide an appropriate choreography to any tune sent to him. Moreover, it was an aesthetic presupposition of the time that dance music should translate some element of the physical motion of the dancers into its musical organization, not only to “hold out a helping hand in order to bar with greater precision the character and movement of the dance” (Batteux [1746] 1981, 55) but also, in doing so, to provide a unified artistic work whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Tomlinson hints at such a synergistic notion in a poem, which he apparently penned, that precedes his visual display of the minuet.

Whilst Tuneful Music gives the Ear Delight,

And Graceful Dancing charms ye ravish’d Sight;

They give a double Force to Cupid’s Dart;

Which through ye Eye, makes Passage to ye Heart. ([1735] 1970, opening unnumbered page of Book II)

At less formal court balls and at public balls held outside of the court, however, which accounted for the majority of dance events, there was little opportunity for dancers to know beforehand what music would be played. While eight-bar phrases are common, there are many examples of dance minuets containing six-, ten-, or twelve-bar phrases. Thus, because there was no standard phrase length for minuet music or, as we shall see, for any of its dance figures or succession of figures, it would only be by sheer coincidence that the dancers’ choreography would fit the phrase organization of the music (Russell 1992, 125–26). Interestingly, the lack of congruence does not appear to have distracted the dancers or caused displeasure. Quite to the contrary, it is possible that, at least for some experienced dancers and observers in the side galleries, some sort of conflict between dance and music was desirable, a point I will return to later.

From the perspective of the dancers, there are two factors that could lead to conflicts between the dance and the music, the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• · Acknowledgments
• · Introduction
• 1. Influences of the Early Eighteenth-Century Ballroom Minuet on the Minuets from J. S. Bach’s French Suites, BWV 812–817
• 2. Mozart in the Ballroom: Minuet-Trio Contrast and the Aristocracy in Self-Portrait
• 3. The Musical Visions of Joseph Lanner and Johann Strauss Sr.
• 4. Dance and the Music of Chopin: Historical Background
• 5. The Musical Visions of Chopin
• 6. Chopin’s Approach to Waltz Form
• · Notes
• · Bibliography
• · Index