[Ansteorra] Why aren't we doing this?

[Jeffrey Clark]

Lord Danihel

Taking a 15th century source that mentions an item that has an identical
name as a 16th source would be what musicologist refer to as a "vertical"
error. Many of the dances that Playford published more than once had changes
between them; the dances and their music evolved during the time of Playford
and if you read through the different editions you can see them. Even the
spelling and the musical notation evolves. In fact there is a marked
distinction from the quasi-mensural notation of the 1651 edition to the
rather modern style of the 9th and 10th (the use of the modern treble clef,
the addition of bar lines, and so on).

I'll give a huge example of this: the "follia". The follia dates back to the
mid-to-late 15th century. So, by the "they name the same thing therefore
they must be equivalent" argument, then any follia is fine.

However, compare the following follias:

Folia (Spain, c.1490): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1HlSymdnB8

Folia (Italy, c.1550): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnpkE81rB40

Folia (Italy, 1650): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=120hfW34Pkg

Folia (France, c.1680):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJM-5Zzbigo&feature=related

Folia (England, c.1610): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUCqsoWv2Sw



You can also compare a couple of galliards:

>From "Nobilita di dame" (Italy c.1600)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZOjWWPxEQs

Galliard from "Le Bourgois Gentilhomme" (France, 1670; the Galliard is about
58 seconds in): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbUmUzNXE1k



So, it is really hard to say that just because we have a document from 1550
that references tune or dance "XYZ", that it is the same "XYZ" mentioned in
a 1650 source.

-AS Zorzi


On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 1:08 AM, Tim McDaniel <tmcd at panix.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 4 Nov 2010, Jeffrey <jmclark85 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The year I mentioned [1651] wasn't random, it was the year that the
>>
>> book the SCA uses for nearly all of its English country dance was
>> published. ECD (1651), Hole in the Wall (1695), and much of the
>> other music heard at events is post-1600 in style, but few complain
>> about that.
>>
>> If we can accept a composition that prost-dates our stated time
>> frame by nearly 100 years, mutate it into a form that the composer
>> would never have intended, and play it in a style that would not
>> have been done in period; what is wrong with a cell phone or camera
>> here and there?
>>
>
> I am not well versed (snrk) in the history of music and dance.  I'd
> like to know more about how the music and dance of Playford are not
> period in style.  Dances were often kept in editions of Playford for
> many years.
> (<http://www.izaak.unh.edu/nhltmd/indexes/dancingmaster/>, for each
> dance, lists all of the editions they were in.)
>
> Nicole Salomone / Lady Jane Milford did
> <http://www.originsofplayforddance.com/english_country_dances.htm> and
> its links.  There are citations of earlier (often pre-1600) references
> to dance names and occasionally tunes or lyrics related to dances in
> Playford 1st ed.  She has citations for her assertions.  There is not
> a lot of proof that the dances or tunes were identical -- but many
> stayed identical or very similar in many editions of Playford later,
> so I think it less likely that they mutated radically early yet
> stayed with the same name.
>
> And so on.
>
>
> I need to go to bed soon, so I have to wrap up more sloppily than I'd
> like.
>
> He says that Purcell composed the tune for "Hole in the Wall" in 1695.
> In the Bryn Gwlad dance group, it has been considered something of a
> "guilty pleasure" and taught because you'll run into it at wars and
> such, though often we just haven't had enough people to dance it.  The
> more out of period Korabushka, John Tallow's Canon, and Mad Robin are
> close to dead here.
>
> That premised: so far as I know, there *are* no published English
> dance manuals before Playford.  I'd love for someone to decode the
> Gresley manuscript, in the same way that the Inns of Court dances
> (from the late 1500s) were cross-correlated from manuscripts.  I'd
> love to learn more than the 6 or so Italian dances I know -- but there
> are lots of obstacles, firstly a lack of Ansteorran teachers with time
> to teach.
>
> So I think things are not so bad as you suggest, and are improving,
> but there's a harder row to hoe than in many other arts.
>
> Danihel de Lindo
>
> --
> Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com
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