Tag Archives: Pierre Rameau

The Dancing Master’s Art Explained: Pierre Rameau, John Essex and Kellom Tomlinson

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In 1725, Pierre Rameau’s Le Maître à danser was published in Paris. Just three years later, a translation by John Essex entitled The Dancing-Master; or, the Art of Dancing Explained appeared in London. It was heralded by an advertisement in Mist’s Weekly Journal for 13 January 1728, which stated that the treatise would be published ‘Next Week’ and promised that it would be ‘illustrated with 60 Figures drawn from the Life’ (Rameau’s title page had promised that his treatise was ‘Enrichi de Figures en Taille-douce’ without saying how many). The price was to be one guinea (equivalent to around £120 today).

Just over a year earlier, the issues of the Evening Post for 13-15 and 20-22 October 1726 had carried advertisements soliciting subscriptions for another English dance manual, Kellom Tomlinson’s The Art of Dancing. Tomlinson promised ‘many Copper Plates’ for the illustration of his treatise indicating how important such images were. There was another advertisement in the London Journal for 3 December 1726, in which Tomlinson promised that The Art of Dancing was ‘now partly finished’ and would be published once he had sufficient subscribers to cover his costs. As we know, Tomlinson’s work would not appear until 1735 but his 1726 advertisements may have acted as a spur to Essex to produce his translation of Rameau’s treatise.

If John Essex had intended to compete with Kellom Tomlinson, it seems that he succeeded. In his Preface to The Art of Dancing, Tomlinson gave his reaction to reading about the imminent publication of The Dancing-Master in Mist’s Weekly Journal:

‘This gave me no small Surprize, having never before heard of either any such Book, or Author. Had it been my Fortune to have known, either before, or after I undertook to write on this Art, that such a Book was extant, my Curiosity would certainly have led me to have consulted it; and had I approved it, ‘tis highly probable, I should have given the World a translation of it, with some additional Observations of my own.’

Tomlinson’s claim to be ignorant of the existence of Rameau’s Le Maître à danser needs some investigation, given the tight-knit community of London’s leading dancing masters and the importance of French treatises and notated dances to their work (evidenced in Tomlinson’s surviving notebook). His immediate response was to defend his own treatise, which he did with an advertisement in Mist’s Weekly Journal for 27 January 1728.

Thereafter, Kellom Tomlinson remained quiet until he was able to return to advertising the forthcoming publication of The Art of Dancing, beginning in the London Evening Post for 20-22 December 1733. He may have spent the intervening period enhancing his treatise with additional plates to accompany his text, so that he could challenge Essex directly.

In the meantime, successive advertisements suggest that Essex’s The Dancing-Master may not have sold well. There were notices in the Country Journal or the Craftsman for 22 November and 27 December 1729, both saying ‘This Day is Published’ although The Dancing-Master had first appeared nearly two years earlier. Then, the Grub Street Journal for 23 December 1730 announced the publication of the ‘Second Edition’ of the treatise (which is dated 1731 on its title page). However, this was not a new edition at all but a reissue of unsold copies of the first edition, with a fresh title page and an additional leaf with approbations from Pecour (who was recommending Rameau’s original treatise) and Anthony L’Abbé. This edition was advertised successively in the Country Journal or the Craftsman on 1 January and 5 May 1733.

The changes to the title page wording (with an extended sub-title and a recommendation to likely purchasers) were doubtless for marketing purposes.

Later that year, the Grub Street Journal for 8 November 1733 advertised a ‘Second Edition with Additions’. This notice reproduces the wording of Essex’s title page, but it is worth paying close attention to the final paragraph.

Essex’s concern about the quality of his plates may have been prompted by his discovery that Kellom Tomlinson was finally ready to publish The Art of Dancing with its ‘many Copper Plates’ as announced in the London Evening Post for 20-22 December 1733.

I will have to leave a discussion of the plates in both The Dancing-Master and The Art of Dancing for another post.

Essex followed up his November 1733 advertisement with another in the Country Journal or the Craftsman on 5 January 1734, saying ‘This Day is Published’ but otherwise word-for-word as in the Grub Street Journal. Tomlinson’s next notice, in the London Evening Post for 18-20 April 1734, advised his subscribers that publication would be deferred to the following January ‘by Reason of the Advance of the Season, and the Emptiness of the Town’. He was hinting that many, if not most, of those who had subscribed to his treatise were the ‘Quality’ who left London for their country estates over the summer and early autumn. Essex seems to have fallen silent, at least I have not discovered further advertisements by him in the mid-1730s. The next notice was Tomlinson’s, in the London Evening Post for 8-10 May 1735, announcing the publication of The Art of Dancing on 26 June.

The additional delay was to allow the Engraving Copyright Act to become law. It had been championed by William Hogarth among others to protect the rights of artists whose original works were the subject of engravings. Tomlinson had himself drawn the images which were engraved by several leading printmakers for his treatise. The Art of Dancing cost two guineas to subscribers and two and a half guineas to others (equivalent to £250 and nearly £300 today).

Kellom Tomlinson’s The Art of Dancing might have been more original and more handsomely produced than The Dancing-Master, as well as being supported by the nobility and gentry, but it did not sell well either. An advertisement in the London Daily Post for 11 December 1736 includes it among ‘Books sold cheap’ by William Warner. According to a notice in the London Evening Post for 5-7 November 1741, Tomlinson was himself selling copies for £1.11s.6d – rather less than the two and a half guineas he was originally charging – although an advertisement in the Country Journal or the Craftsman for 2 January 1742 quotes his original price. In the same newspaper for 31 December 1743, Tomlinson told intending purchasers that ‘there now remain but a small Number unsold of the Work’. The London Evening Post for 9-11 October 1746 advertised a ‘Second Edition’ as published that day, although surviving copies are dated 1744. The pagination of the two editions suggests that the second was in fact a reissue. Here are their respective title pages.

The last advertisement for the ‘Second Edition’ of Essex’s The Dancing-Master appeared in the Daily Advertiser for 12 January 1744 and there are surviving copies with this date on their title pages. John Essex was buried at St Dionis Backchurch in London on 6 February 1744.

I have come across two later advertisements for Tomlinson’s The Art of Dancing. One is in the London Evening Post 30 January – 1 February 1752, offering the ‘Second Edition’ which is ‘colour’d, in a most beautiful Manner, and bound’ for five guineas (equivalent to more than £600 today). The other, in the Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer for 9 November 1758, has Tomlinson offering ‘The Original Art of Dancing’ for three guineas. The Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer for 18-20 June 1761 reported ‘Tuesday died, of a Paralytick Disorder, in Theobald’s Court, East Street, Red-Lion-Square, Mr. Kenelm Tomlinson, Dancing-Master, in the 74th Year of his Age’.

The publication history of these two early 18th-century dance manuals illuminates the commercial and social as well as the artistic context within which London’s dancing masters worked. They were intended for a monied if not an elite clientele. Both The Dancing-Master and The Art of Dancing are worth detailed research which goes well beyond a concern with the steps, style and technique that are their subject matter.

References

Both of these treatises were studied in detail by the American dance historian Carol G. Marsh in her PhD thesis ‘French Court Dance in England, 1706-1740: a Study of the Sources’ (City University of New York, 1985). In this post, I have drawn on and tried to add to her work.

The ‘Z’ Figure of the Minuet: Pierre Rameau

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I recently saw a demonstration of the ‘Z’ figure of the minuet that gave me pause for thought. Citing Pierre Rameau and the diagram in Le Maître a danser, the figure was danced with two pas de menuet sideways to the left, two forwards on the diagonal and one backwards to the right. So far as I can remember, I have never been taught the ‘Z’ figure in this way, but instead of rushing to the conclusion that the interpretation must be wrong, I decided to do some research. A quick look on YouTube revealed very few videos of the ballroom minuet, let alone Rameau’s version of this dance. Of the two videos I found, the couple in one danced the final section of the ‘Z’ figure with two pas de menuet sideways to the right (turning around the right shoulder for the necessary quarter-turn), while the other couple did indeed do a single pas de menuet backwards. It was interesting that the latter video was far more recent than the former, so was I looking at a fresh interpretation of Rameau’s instructions?

Rameau deals with the figures of the ballroom minuet in his chapter XXII, ‘Du Menuet, & de la maniere de le danser régulierement’. Here is Rameau’s illustration of the ‘Z’ figure – ‘Figure Principal du Menuet’ – from this chapter.

As you can see, it says that both dancers perform two pas de menuet sideways to the left, two more forwards to pass one another by the right shoulder ‘en effaçant l’épaule’ and one backwards to the right (‘un en arriere du coté droit’).

When we turn to Rameau’s text, his written instructions are less clear.

Although he includes the numbers 1, 2 and 3 on his diagram, Rameau refers only to 2 and 3 in his text. In fact, he says nothing at all about the final step of the ‘Z’ figure. Is it possible that a part of Rameau’s instructions was omitted when the book was printed? So far as I am aware, there has been no detailed bibliographical study of this text that might address such issues.

I turned to John Essex’s 1728 translation of Rameau’s treatise, The Dancing-Master, to see whether he might have made good the omission in the original. Essex reproduces Rameau’s diagram, titling it ‘The fourth & Principal Figure of the Menuet’ and he too shows ‘two menuet Steps to ye left’ followed by ‘two forward, shading the shoulder’, but he has ‘two backwards to the right’.

Essex has made a change to Rameau’s illustration, but he merely translates the associated text without alteration.

Although Rameau’s treatise was published in 1725, was he perhaps reflecting an earlier French convention for the performance of the ‘Z’ figure? Was Essex merely making a faithful translation, or was he referring to a convention still current in English performances of the minuet?

Why was I taught a ‘Z’ figure with two pas de menuet sideways to the left, two forwards on the diagonal and two sideways to the right? Does the answer lie in other dance manuals of the early 18th century rather than in an idiosyncratic approach to dance reconstruction? I will turn to the other sources for the ‘Z’ figure in a new post.

La Bretagne in London

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A dance titled The Bretagne turns up very occasionally in the bills for London’s theatres during the first half of the 18th century. Its earliest appearance was at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 5 April 1731, when Francis and Marie Sallé danced the ‘Louvre and Bretagne’ at his benefit performance. The Louvre is, of course, Pecour’s Aimable Vainqueur which was a favourite dance of the period. From this performance, it seems clear that the second dance must have been Pecour’s La Bretagne, created in honour of the duchesse de Bourgogne following the birth of her son the duc de Bretagne in 1704. This ballroom choreography was published in notation the same year, in Feuillet’s IIIme. Recüeil de danses de bal. Here is the title page for the dance (which was evidently also sold separately) and the first plate.

In 1706, P. Siris included La Bretagne in his translation of Feuillet’s Choregraphie, published in London as The Art of Dancing by Characters and Figures. Here is the first plate.

Bretagne Siris plate 1

His version differs from Feuillet’s in some of the steps and the figures. It must have served to make the dance known in London, for John Weaver included it in the second edition of his translation of Choregraphie, Orchesography, published around 1722. Siris’s version also attracted the attention of Sir Richard Steele, who referred to the dance in his periodical The Lover on 4 March 1714. Steele mentions a separate edition of Siris’s notation of The Bretagne which had been published in London the same week (no copy is known to survive). The short essay that Steele weaves around it (with references to the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht that ended the War of Spanish Succession and made peace between Britain and France) needs detailed analysis that I cannot undertake here.

By the time that the Sallés performed it on stage in 1731, La Bretagne must have been known in London – at least to the capital’s dancing masters and perhaps to some of their pupils as well. Its next known performance on the London stage was not until 25 May 1738, when it was given (again at a benefit performance) alongside a Minuet by Miss Wright and Miss Morrison. The advertisement makes no mention of cross-dressing by one of the young women, although the practice was not unusual on the London stage. The next performance was on 5 May 1740 at Covent Garden, when James Dupré and Mrs Ozanne danced ‘The Britain (Ball Dance) and Minuet’ for his benefit. The last recorded performance was on 1 April 1742, again at Covent Garden, when Desnoyer and Sga Barberina gave ‘A Ball Dance call’d the Britannia, and a Louvre concluding with a Minuet’ for his benefit. I have wondered whether this might have been Isaac’s The Britannia, published in notation in 1706 and reissued a number of times subsequently, or perhaps a dance to music from Thomas Arne’s 1740 masque Alfred. The latter included the song ‘Rule Britannia’ and Sga Barberina had danced at the masque’s first performance before Prince Frederick at Cliveden. On reflection, I am inclined to believe that the dance at Covent Garden in 1742 was Pecour’s La Bretagne, but I cannot be sure.

La Bretagne appeared in notation many times over the years. The duet was notated afresh by Pierre Rameau and published in his Abbrégé de la nouvelle méthode, which was reissued several times after its first appearance in 1725. It also turns up in a number of manuscript sources – see the entry for the dance in Francine Lancelot’s invaluable catalogue of surviving notations La Belle Dance (1996). It is mentioned by Taubert in his Rechtschaffener Tantzmeister (1717) as well as Rameau in Le Maître a danser (1725) and Kellom Tomlinson in The Art of Dancing (1735) – in each case in relation to the performance of individual steps, indicating its use in teaching.

I haven’t diligently pursued the teaching of La Bretagne in London or elsewhere, but the dance does turn up occasionally in dancing masters’ advertisements. One, for Messrs Welch and Hart in the Public Advertiser for 14 April 1768, offers cotillons, minuets, the Louvre, Passepied, Matlotte, the ‘Almand François’ and English country dances, as well as a ‘Nouvelle Bretaigne’ listed among the duets. I haven’t been able to locate any notation for a ball dance called ‘Nouvelle Bretaigne’ but it does hint that La Bretagne was routinely offered by London’s dancing masters, so Welch and Hart were attempting to go one better.

The explicit references to the teaching of the duet in London come much later, long after it had disappeared from the theatres. An advertisement in the Morning Post for 13 September 1776 announces that ‘Mr. Ferrere’ had established himself in London.

Ferrere Morning Post 13 Sep 1776 (2)

He must surely have been the Ferrère who created some of the works preserved in the manuscript compiled in 1782 by August Ferrère, who was his son. So far as I am aware, no reference to Ferrère Senior teaching in London has previously been found. He was still successfully plying his trade some sixteen years later, as this advertisement in the Oracle from 12 April 1792 shows.

Ferrere Oracle 12 Apr 1792 (2)

The list of dances that he was teaching includes several of Pecour’s ballroom choreographies from the beginning of the 18th century. Ferrère was surely not the only dancing master to include these in his curriculum, although I have been unable to locate other examples from the earlier 1700s.

More research is needed – into the inclusion of these early ballroom dances in performances on the London stage, as well as into London’s dancing masters and what they taught. There is more to be said, too, about Pecour’s choreography for La Bretagne, but that will have to wait for another occasion.

The Dancing Master in Print

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I have just begun a new topic of research, which has taken me in an old direction. It has returned me to the point of intersection between dance history and book history – I am, of course, both a dance historian and a rare books curator.

My new research involves John Essex, who is well known to almost everyone interested in baroque dance as the translator of both Feuillet’s 1706 Recüeil de contredances and Rameau’s 1725 Le Maître a danser. For the Furthur Improvement of Dancing was published in London in 1710 and The Dancing-Master followed in 1728. I did quite a lot of research on Essex when I wrote his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. I’ve just gone back to my notes and, with a bit of additional work, I’ve made some interesting discoveries. I don’t know whether what I have found is already out there (some of it definitely is), but here is a summary of the publication of history of each of Essex’s translations. In both cases, this can only be described as convoluted!

For the Furthur Improvement of Dancing was first mentioned in the Tatler on 25 March 1710 and again on 30 March. Here is the advertisement from 30 March.

Tatler 30 Mar 1710

As you can see, the volume was offered for 5 shillings (at least £16 at today’s values, and probably more like £40 or even £50). Another advertisement in the Spectator for 5 March 1712 referred to the ‘3d Edition’, although there seems to be no record of a second edition and I don’t know of a surviving copy of either a second or a third edition. (The English Short Title Catalogue shows that there were at least two different editions, or issues, but I’m not going to get into the arcane niceties of historical bibliography here).

There is, however, another very different edition of this text. This survives in a single copy which is now in the British Library. I have not been able to find an advertisement for this, which tends to confirm that it was made as a presentation copy for Caroline, Princess of Wales around 1715. Essex’s original 1710 edition is an octavo, a quite small book. The later edition is a much larger folio, with additional country dances and a ‘new French Dance Call’d the Princess’s Passpied’ choreographed and notated by Essex himself. Here is the title page of the 1710 edition.

Essex Further Improvement 1710

Here is the title page of the later edition.

Essex Further Improvement 1715

The plates for the country dances in the original edition are printed four to a page in the new edition, as here.

Essex Further Improvement 1715 Trip

Essex added four new country dances, which follow that same convention but were obviously engraved on single plates. Here is the first plate of one of them.

Essex Further Improvement 1715 Liberty

I knew that the publication history of The Dancing-Master was complicated, but my additional research has managed to add to the confusion. The title page of Essex’s original edition is dated 1728. Here is the advertisement in Mist’s Weekly Journal for 13 January 1728

Mist's 13 Jan 1728

I haven’t been able to track down a later advertisement confirming that it was indeed published the following week. However, the Country Journal or the Craftsman for 22 November 1729 has another advertisement for the self-same book, which says ‘This Day in Published’ albeit with a different list of booksellers. The paper ran another identical advertisement on 27 December 1729.

On 24 December 1730, the Grub Street Journal declared ‘This Day is published, the second edition’ of The Dancing-Master, with the added enticement that it appeared ‘With the Approbation of Mr. Pecour, Master of the Opera at Paris, and Mr. L’Abee, Court Master to the present Royal Family’. The next advertisement I have been able to find is in the Country Journal or the Craftsman again, on 1 January 1732, saying the same thing (minus the ‘Approbation’) and with different booksellers. All of these ‘editions’ are evidently the same, including the ‘Figures for their better explanation. In sixty Draughts. Done from the Life, and engraved on copper plates’, all signed ‘G.A.’ or ‘G. Alsop’ in the surviving copies. There is a second edition of Essex’s The Dancing-Master dated 1731 on the title page.

On 5 May 1733, the Country Journal and Craftsman announced ‘Just Published, The Dancing Master. Third Edition with Additions, all the Figures newly done from the Life, and engraved by G. Bickham’. Yet another advertisement in the Grub Street Journal for 8 November 1733 declared ‘Just Publish’d, the Second Edition with Additions’ of The Dancing-Master, with some further information:

‘N.B. The Figures in the first Edition being ill design’d, are all entirely new drawn from the Life, and engraved by G. Bickham, jun. Those Gentlemen or Ladies who have clean Books, shall have them changed for this new Edition gratis, if they please to send to Mr. Essex in Roode-Lane, Fenchurch-street.’

It would be interesting to know who posed for these ‘Figures … drawn from the Life’ (the same claim was made for Alsop’s drawings). The story does not end there, for the Country Journal or the Craftsman for 5 January 1734 advertised ‘This Day is Published’ The Dancing-Master, with no mention of an edition.

Here are the title pages from the 1728 and 1731 editions.

Here is one of Alsop’s plates, beside the corresponding plate by Bickham, so you can verify the truth of the assertion in the Grub Street Journal advertisement.

I have to be a resourceful if I am to find suitable illustrations – the Bickham one on the right is actually taken from Cyril Beaumont’s 1931 translation of Rameau’s Le Maître a danser (Beaumont chose to make his own translation of that text, but used the Bickham plates from Essex’s edition).

There was just one more ‘Second Edition’ of The Dancing-Master, announced in the Daily Advertiser for 12 January 1744.

Daily Advertiser 12 Jan 1744

Look particularly at the foot of the advertisement, which tells us that ‘There are but very few left of this Second Edition’. I know of two surviving copies, which has 1744 on the title page and uses Bickham’s plates. This final ‘edition’ appeared very shortly before Essex’s death. He was buried in St Dionis Backchurch in the City of London on 6 February 1744.

So, what was going on with all these ‘editions’? In fact, apart from the new plates, they were not really new editions at all but reissues. Close examination of the surviving copies, by several researchers independently, indicates that all have the same setting of the text and so were all printed in one run. Essex’s The Dancing-Master was expensive. One guinea approximates to at least £100 today, more likely to between £200 and £300. The original print run was evidently too ambitious for the market, as the book was probably of more interest to provincial dancing masters than to the aspiring metropolitan ballroom dancers it was principally aimed at. The advertisements thus represent a series of increasingly ingenious (or desperate) marketing ploys to sell the rather too many remaining copies.

There is much more to say about John Essex and his two translations, not least in relation to rival dancing masters and to the ingenious George Bickham junior, but I will leave it there – for now at least.

The Pas de Menuet and Its Timing

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Between 1688 and 1787 more than twenty different sources provide information about how to dance the minuet. They give a variety of details and I am not going to work through all of them. My interest here is the pas de menuet, the step that defines the dance, and its musical timing. The pas de menuet has four steps to be performed over six musical beats, two bars of music in triple time. As the dance manuals make clear there were a number of different versions of the step and various solutions to the issue of timing.

For some reason, Feuillet did not include minuet steps in his first edition of Choregraphie in 1700. He added them to the second edition of 1701 in a ‘Supplément des Pas’, notating four different versions of the pas de menuet.

Pas de Menuet Feuillet (2)

Feuillet, Choregraphie, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1701), Supplément de Pas (detail)

Feuillet provides no information about the timing of the step. He did address musical timing in his ‘Traité de la Cadance’ at the beginning of his 1704 collection of ‘Entrées de Ballet’ by Guillaume-Louis Pecour. He didn’t include the pas de menuet among his examples.

In his Rechtschaffener Tantzmeister (1717), Gottfried Taubert describes the same four versions of the pas de menuet as Feuillet – the pas de menuet en un seul mouvement, the pas de menuet à la boëmienne, the pas de menuet en fleuret and the pas de menuet à trois mouvements. He discusses timing in some detail, preferring the pas de menuet à la boëmienne because it accords best with his notions of the relationship between the steps and the musical bars.

‘It begins with the bend on the upbeat or last quarter-note of the previous measure; the rise comes on the downbeat of the new measure, and, while the legs remain extended, the right foot steps forward; on the second beat the body holds steady in the raised position; on the third beat the first stiff step is taken with the left foot. On the first beat of the next measure, another stiff step is taken with the right foot, adding a very quick bend of the knees at the end; rise again on the second beat, and in doing so step forward with the left leg. On the upbeat there is another bend right away, with the right so placed as to connect this compound step with the next.’ [Translated by Tilden Russell, The Compleat Dancing Master. 2 vols. (New York, 2012), vol. 2, p. 526]

Taubert does not like the popular pas de menuet en fleuret, because it does not accord with his aesthetic-musical preferences. He grudgingly accepts a timing which gives the first demi-coupé to the first bar and the fleuret to the second.

In Le Maître a danser (1725), Pierre Rameau describes the pas de menuet à trois mouvements and the pas de menuet en fleuret (which he calls the pas de menuet à deux mouvements). He gives the timing for the latter.

‘… which is performed within the Compass of two Barrs of triple Time, one called the Cadence, and the other the Contre-Cadence. But for the better Apprehension, it may be divided into three equal Parts; the First for the first half Coupee, the Second for the Second, and the Third for the two Walks, which ought to take up no longer Time than a half Coupee: But in the last Walk it is to be observed, that the Heel be set down to be able to make a Sink to begin another Step. [Translated by John Essex, The Dancing-Master (London, 1728), p. 44]

Kellom Tomlinson wrote his treatise The Art of Dancing in the mid-1720s, although it was not published until 1735. He describes three pas de menuet: Feuillet’s pas de menuet à la boëmienne, with its demi-coupés at the beginning and the end, which he calls the ‘English Minuet Step’; the pas de menuet en fleuret, which he calls both the ‘French Minuet Step’ and the ‘New Minuet Step’; and the pas de menuet en trois mouvements. His timing for the pas de menuet en fleuret gives the first bar to the opening demi-coupé, with the rise on the first beat, lowering the heel but keeping the knees straight on the second beat and sinking on the third beat. The second bar is given to the fleuret, with the rise of the demi-coupé on the first beat, the second step on the second beat and the third step on the third beat. Tomlinson does not specify the timing of the sink preparatory to the first demi-coupé.

When he writes of the pas de menuet sideways to the right, Tomlinson prescribes the pas de menuet en fleuret, using the same timing as that travelling forwards. When he comes to the ‘Minuet Step of three Movements’ (which, confusingly, he also calls the ‘New Step’), Tomlinson sets out a different timing.

‘The Rising or Receiving the Weight upon the Toe or Instep marks the Time to the first Note of the three belonging to the first Measure; the second is in the Fall of the Heel and Sink which prepares for the second Step of the four belonging to the Minuet Step, which is made by stepping of the left Foot forwards, in the same Manner as the first; and the Rising or Receiving of the Body upon the Instep is to the third and last note of the first Measure. The third Step of the said four is made with the right Foot stepping a plain straight Step forwards upon the Toe to the first Note of the three in the second Measure; the second is in the coming down of the Heel of the said right Foot and Sink that prepares for the fourth and last Step which is with the left Foot, in stepping forwards from the Sink aforesaid; and the Rising or Receiving of the Weight upon the Toe is to the third Note of the second Measure of the Tune, concluding in the same Position from whence it begun …’ [Tomlinson, The Art of Dancing (London, 1735), p. 110]

In his own notated version of the ballroom minuet (plate U in the treatise), Tomlinson uses the pas de menuet à trois mouvements whenever the dancers are travelling to the left.

I promised not to look at every treatise on the minuet, but I will include just one more, Malpied’s Traité sur l’art de la danse, which gives a late 18th-century version of this long-lived duet. Towards the end of his text he turns to the minuet and provides not only his own notation of the ballroom minuet but also examples of the timing of the pas de menuet en fleuret (the only step he uses).

Pas de Menuet Malpied (2)

Malpied, Traité sur l’art de la danse (Paris, 1770?), p. 100

His timings for the pas de menuet are closely related to those of Rameau, although Malpied was writing some fifty years later.

I ought to mention that modern practitioners of the art of baroque dance interpret these various instructions in different ways. One area of divergence is the timing of the plié at the beginning of the first demi-coupé – is it on beat 6 of the preceding bar, or on the ‘and’ which precedes the first beat of the bar in which the pas de menuet begins?

 

Famous French Ballroom Dances

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Among the many ballroom dances published in Beauchamp-Feuillet notation in the early 1700s, eight choreographies have a claim to be famous. All were published in notation and recorded in manuscript collections numerous times. Almost all of them survived well beyond the first decades of the 18th century. All are by Guillaume-Louis Pecour and all were originally notated and published by Raoul Auger Feuillet. Whether or not these dances continued to be performed in the ballroom, they were known to dancing masters who went on teaching them long after the style and technique they exemplified had gone out of fashion.

These are the dances, with their first date of publication:

La Bourée d’Achille (1700)

La Bourgogne (1700)

La Forlana (1700)

La Mariée (1700)

Le Passepied (1700)

Aimable Vainqueur (1701)

L’Allemande (1702)

La Bretagne (1704)

Most were long-lived, but were they really that famous?

Two of these dances, Aimable Vainqueur and La Mariée, enjoyed extended lives on the London stage and I have looked at them in earlier posts. Five of the dances (including La Mariée) come from Feuillet’s very first collection of Pecour’s ballroom dances, published in 1700 alongside his treatise Choregraphie which explains the new notation system. That treatise and its associated collections of dances were reissued in 1709 and again in 1713. Significantly, these dances (together with the other three) were all included in Pierre Rameau’s Abbrégé de la nouvelle méthode dans l’art de d’ecrire ou de traçer toutes sortes de danses de ville, first published in Paris around 1725 and intended to introduce his revised version of Beauchamp-Feuillet notation. Rameau’s Abbrégé was reissued around 1728 and again around 1732. The dances must have become more widely known through the successive reissues of both works.

Two of the dances, La Bourée d’Achille and La Bourgogne, may have had more limited afterlives than the others. Neither featured in later printed treatises and were recorded only in what are thought to be early manuscript collections of notated choreographies. Although La Bourgogne does appear in I.H.P. Maître de Danse oder Tantz-Meister published in Leipzig in 1705, indicating that it quickly became known outside France. It is interesting to note that both of the choreographies have become familiar to modern practitioners of baroque dance, as they are often taught to beginners.

Guillaume-Louis Pecour, La Bourée d’Achille (Paris, 1700), first plate
Guillaume-Louis Pecour, La Bourgogne (Paris, 1700), first plate

Le Passepied and La Bretagne were published as late as 1760 in Madrid, within Pablo Minguet’s El Noble Arte de Danzar a la Francesa. Le Passepied had also been included in I. H. P. Maître de Danse oder Tantz-Meister, while La Bretagne appeared in the translations of Choregraphie issued in London by Siris and Weaver between 1706 and 1730. L’Allemande, which I have also mentioned in an earlier post, appeared as late as 1765 in Magny’s Principes de Choregraphie, alongside more recent dances. Magny provided it with new music, perhaps to bring it more up-to-date. The choreography with the longest life of all was La Forlana, published around 1780 in Paris in a new notation by Malpied.

These dances probably owed their fame and longevity to a variety of factors, including their music, their original performers, their associations with particular people or places and perhaps the desire of individual dancing masters to find favour in court circles. They underline Europe’s (including Britain’s) widespread and enduring fascination with French court culture and not least its expression through dancing. I hope to be able to say more about them, particularly within an English context, in future posts.

 

The Fundamental Step of the Cotillon

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In his Le Repertoire des Bals of 1762 de La Cuisse set down the steps to be used in cotillons, although he did not explain how to perform them. One of these steps is:

‘Le Pas de Gavote ou Demi-Contretems … un Pas naturel; C’es le Pas fondamental de la Contredanse; C’est enfin avec ce Pas que se font les Ronds, les Moulinets, les Courses, et prèsque toutes les figures des Contredanses. Chacun de ces Pas vaut une demie-mesure de Musique.’

So, the demi-contretems was much used in France when dancing cotillons. As the name, as well as de La Cuisse’s explanation, implies, there were two demi-contretems to each bar of music.

Gallini made no mention of the demi-contretems among the steps in his A New Collection of Forty-four Cotillons. Perhaps this was a deliberate omission, for he writes ‘it is intended here to explain only those [steps] which are used in the following cotillons’. Gherardi included ‘Demi contre-tems d’un Pied et de l’autre’ within his list of ‘The Names of the French Country Dance Steps’ in his Fourteen Cotillons or French Dances published around 1767, repeated in his subsequent collections. Contrary to what I said in my post Dancing the Cotillon: Gherardi’s Steps, the dancing master did list some individual steps among the sequences. However, he did not explain how this, or any other, step should be performed. Hurst says nothing about steps and Siret also remains silent. Villeneuve’s list of steps does not include the demi-contretems.

The demi-contretems is a step for travelling forwards in a variety of figures, as recommended by de La Cuisse. This is how it is recorded in the 1705 dance for four Le Cotillon. This is also how it has been used in those modern reconstructions of cotillons which I have danced. I don’t know why it was ignored by some of the dancing masters publishing in London – unless the cotillons in their collections hold the answer.

In the dance manuals of the early 18th century, the first mention by name of the demi-contretems seems to be in Pierre Rameau’s Abbrégé de la nouvelle méthode published around 1725. He includes notated versions of the step, with its name, in his table ‘Suitte des contretems’ (p.65) but he does not describe it. In Rameau’s Le Maître a danser it is not mentioned by name, but its manner of performance may be taken from the description of the contretems de gavotte (translation by John Essex, The Dancing-Master, p. 97):

‘To make one with the right Foot, the Body must be on the Left in the fourth Position, the Heel of the right behind up; then sink upon the Left, and rise upon it with a Spring; but at the same Time the right Leg, which was ready to go, moves forwards in the fourth Position and on the Toes, both Legs well extended; …’

Instead of making the second step, to perform a contretems de gavotte, the dancer should transfer his or her weight onto the right foot to repeat the demi-contretems on the left.

The instruction ‘rise upon it with a Spring’ (Rameau writes ‘se relever en sautant dessus’) has resulted in two different modes of execution by dancers today. One is simply a hop followed by a step (usually onto a flat foot). The other begins with a small spring onto the ball of the foot, much like a rélevé in classical ballet, followed by step onto the ball of the foot and a quick sink into plié. The latter is more difficult and travels less, but gives a pleasing vivacity and crispness to both the step and the figures in which it is used. The demi-contretems can also be performed with a pas rond, in which the working leg traces a small half circle in the air as it passes from back to front. This little embellishment suits the rococo elegance of the cotillon very well.

Isaac’s Rigadoon: the choreography

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Isaac’s Rigadoon is one of 31 notated dances which either are or include a rigaudon (three more dances are labelled as rigaudons but are in fact gavottes). Among these 14 were published in London, of which 8 (Including Isaac’s Rigadoon) are rigaudons throughout. As I said in my previous post on this dance, it was first published in 1706 but may have been created some years earlier. Isaac choreographed a second rigaudon, The Rigadoon Royal, in 1711.

What made Isaac’s Rigadoon so admired and, apparently, so popular? Music theorists of the time characterised the rigaudon as ‘rustic’ and suggested that it was a fast dance. I have a delightful recording (made for rehearsal purposes some years ago) which is both and really brings the duet to life. The dance, in duple time, is quite long. The musical structure is the conventional AABB (A has 4 bars and B has 6) played through four times, so there are 80 bars of dancing. The choreography is lively. More than half of the steps incorporate small jumps, which are notated as such. There are no demi-jettés and only a few steps with a terminating demi-coupé to give a sense of suspension rather than a lilt. The step vocabulary is relatively limited, but Isaac’s use of variants on basic steps and his combinations of these demand swift reactions and rhythmic clarity. This can only be achieved through good underlying technique, particularly placement (or aplomb) and control over the mouvements that provide vertical articulation between and within the steps. The music needs some rustic heaviness (though not too much) but the steps need a feeling of upward spring. If the Rigadoon is as fast as I think it should be, it is not an easy dance and needs much practice to get it right. It must have been an agreeable challenge to able amateur dancers.

John Weaver identified four steps in Isaac’s Rigadoon that were rarely, if ever, found in other dances. All occur on the first plate of the notation, the first AABB section of the dance. Was Weaver (if not Mr Isaac himself) deliberately appealing not only to the contemporary love of novelty but also to a desire for ‘English Dancing’?

Weaver Step Suplement detail

Feuillet transl. Weaver. Orchesography (1706), ‘A Suplement of Steps’, detail.

Isaac Rigadoon 1 detail

Mr Isaac. The Rigadoon (1706), first plate, detail.

Weaver’s reference to ‘the so frequent use of them’ in the Rigadoon is a little puzzling. The ‘boree wth. a bound’ does appear throughout the dance. Feuillet gives notations for a large number of variants on the pas de bourée but none has either a final demi-jetté or jetté, even though Rameau refers to the former in Le Maître a danser. Weaver makes no reference to Isaac’s variant pas de bourée which has a pas glissé as the final step. The ‘contretem wth. a bound’ is used only four times by the man in the Rigadoon (the lady has three). There is nothing similar in Feuillet’s ‘Table des Contre-temps’. Although Rameau refers to a ‘contre-tems à deux mouvemens’ he actually means a contretemps balonné. My impression, from working through quite a number of notated choreographies over the years, is that the ‘contretem wth. a bound’ is quite widely used elsewhere, but I need to check this out. The ‘sissonne wth. a Contre temps’ occurs only at the very beginning of the Rigadoon. All the other sissonnes in the dance are the conventional version, as notated by Feuillet at the beginning of his ‘Table des Pas de Sissonne’ and described by Rameau. Isaac’s ‘contretems wth. a slide’ occurs only once, in the first B section near the beginning of the dance’. It is not recorded by either Feuillet or Rameau.

The contradiction between Weaver’s statement about ‘the so frequent use’ of these steps and the actual inclusion of them in his notation of Isaac’s Rigadoon raises questions. Could Weaver’s notation be inaccurate in some places? Did he perhaps use Feuillet’s standard notation instead of recording Isaac’s variant steps? Or was the dance as notated made more conventional to accommodate a greater range of amateur dance skills?

I meant this post to be a discussion of the difficulties, and the pleasures, to be encountered while learning Isaac’s Rigadoon, but I am still only about half-way through the choreography. A proper appraisal will have to wait for a little while longer.

 

A Year of Dance: 1725

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1725 was quite a busy year, both culturally and politically.

In Britain, one noteworthy event was George I’s foundation of the Order of the Bath. However, the hanging of the notorious thief-taker Jonathan Wild at Tyburn on 24 May 1725 probably attracted greater interest. In Europe, there were several events of undoubted political significance. Tsar Peter the Great died on 8 February and was succeeded by his second wife – Catherine I was the first woman to rule Russia. The Emperor Charles VI and King Philip V of Spain signed the Treaty of Vienna on 30 April, which included a guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction allowing the Emperor to be succeeded by a daughter, despite the prevailing Salic law. In France, the fifteen year old Louis XV married the Polish Princess Marie Leszczyńska. She was seven years older than the King.

At the Paris Opéra, Les Eléments an opéra-ballet by Delalande and Destouches was given its first public performance on 29 May 1725. The work had initially been performed in 1721 as a court ballet, with Louis XV among the dancers. Its popularity on the public stage was to be long-lived. In London there were two notably diverse premieres within a week. Handel’s latest opera Rodelinda was performed at the King’s Theatre on 13 February. On 20 February, Drury Lane’s new pantomime Apollo and Daphne opened. It was described in the bills as a ‘Dramatick Entertainment of Dancing’ and it did indeed have a great deal of serious dancing in its main plot.

1725 was an unusually busy year for dance publishing. In London, L’Abbé’s new dance for the year was Prince Frederick, in honour of George I’s eldest grandson. L’Abbé’s A New Collection of Dances, notations for 13 choreographies performed in London’s theatres, may have appeared this year (it has no publication date). The undated 18th edition of The Dancing-Master has also been assigned to 1725, although some modern sources prefer 1728. The dancing master Siris published his own ‘dance for the year’ The Diana, in honour of the Duchess of Marlborough’s much-loved grand-daughter Lady Diana Spencer.

Siris. The Diana. First plate

Siris. The Diana. First plate

In Paris, the most important dance publication of 1725 was undoubtedly Pierre Rameau’s treatise Le Maître a danser. This work explains how to perform the steps recorded by Feuillet a quarter of a century earlier. Rameau’s revision of the Beauchamp-Feuillet system of notation, put forward in his Abbrégé de la Nouvelle Méthode, probably appeared in late 1725. He followed Feuillet by including a collection of twelve dances by Pecour as part two of the treatise, all in his revised notation. These dances, described as the most beautiful and best liked of Pecour’s many choreographies, were apparently still popular in the ballroom. They were given a new lease of life by their appearance in subsequent reissues of Rameau’s Abbrégé.

Pecour. La Mariée, notated by Rameau. First plate

Pecour. La Mariée, notated by Rameau. First plate

The regular annual collections of dances issued first by Feuillet and then by Dezais continued with the XXIII Recüeil de dances pour l’Année 1725. Dezais also published his Premier Livre de Contre-Dances, which I have written about in other posts. The title Premier Livre … suggests that he was intending to pursue a new series devoted to notations of contredanses. No more collections of either danses à deux or contredanses appeared after 1725. The abrupt cessation suggests that Dezais died before he could prepare or publish further collections. 1725 marks the end of the publication of notated dances in France, until the contredanses known as cotillons began to appear in a simplified form of notation in the early 1760s.

La Mariée on the London stage

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La Mariée, a ballroom dance for a man and a woman, was one of the dances Pierre Rameau described as the most beautiful choreographies created by Guillaume-Louis Pecour. Rameau included his own notation of the dance in his Abbregé de la nouvelle methode,dans l’art d’ecrire ou de traçer toutes sortes de danse de ville, published in Paris probably in 1725. The duet already had a long history by then, for it was first published in 1700 in Feuillet’s Recueil de dances composées par M. Pecour, one of the collections that accompanied Choregraphie.

Guillaume-Louis Pecour. Recueil de dances (Paris, 1700), plate 12, opening of La Mariée

Guillaume-Louis Pecour. Recueil de dances (Paris, 1700), plate 12, opening of La Mariée

The dance historian Rebecca Harris-Warrick showed, in an essay published in 1989, that La Mariée was almost certainly originally a stage dance created for a revival of Lully’s opera Roland in 1690. She suggested that the dance entered the French ballroom repertoire during the 1690s. It may have been danced in mascarade entertainments during the 1700 carnival season at the French court. It may well have continued to be danced on the stage of the Paris Opéra in later revivals of Roland, by such stars as Ballon and Mlle Subligny (1705) and David Dumoulin and Mlle Prévost (1709). It was mentioned in many dance treatises and republished in notation many times between 1700 and 1765. After that it apparently faded from view.

Pecour’s popular duet had probably reached London by 1698, when the music was published in John Walsh’s compilation Theater Musick, being a Collection of the Newest Ayers for the Violin. Harris-Warrick speculates that it may have been danced at William III’s birth night ball that year. If so, one of the performers could have been Anthony L’Abbé who had already danced before the King in May 1698. On 1 June 1703, L’Abbé was billed at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in The Wedding Dance. This was described in advertisements as ‘compos’d by Monsieur L’Abbé, and perform’d by him, Mrs Elford, and others’. The piece seems to have been a divertissement, which may or may not have incorporated Pecour’s La Mariée.

In later years, ‘Wedding’ dances reappeared every so often among the entr’acte entertainments in London’s theatres. There was a Wedding Dance ‘by Prince and others’ at Drury Lane on 20 July 1713 and a Grand Comic Wedding Dance, created by Moreau, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 14 January 1717. Moreau’s Wedding Dance was performed by three men and three women together with the Sallé children, Francis and Marie. I am inclined to think that La Mariée was performed as part of Moreau’s divertissement, possibly by the Sallés. On 15 May 1718, a dance titled Marie was given at Drury Lane by Cook and Miss Schoolding. Apart from the ongoing dance rivalry between the theatres, which caused much copying of repertoire, Cook had danced in Moreau’s piece and Miss Schoolding was Mrs Moreau’s younger sister.

Thereafter The Marie (as it was often billed) was regularly given as an entr’acte dance. The Sallés performed it, as adult dancers, several times during the 1725-26 and 1726-27 seasons. The duet was later taken up by Leach Glover, one of the leading dancers in John Rich’s company, who gave it regularly at his benefit performances during the 1730s. Pecour’s famous ball dance apparently made its last London stage appearance, after a gap of many years, on 24 April 1759 at Covent Garden. It was performed ‘By Desire’ by Lalauze and Miss Toogood at his benefit. Did they really dance the choreography as created some seventy years earlier?