Tag Archives: Queen Anne

Mr Isaac’s The Britannia

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The Britannia is the last of the six dances named on the title page of A Collection of Ball-Dances perform’d at Court. It must have been the latest of these choreographies to be created, for the dance was first performed at the celebrations for Queen Anne’s birthday on 5 February 1706. Could it have been the first dance to be published in Beauchamp-Feuillet notation in London? It is engraved in a very different style to the other dances in this collection, as the following images show, and there is evidence to suggest that it may have been published separately before A Collection of Ball-Dances appeared.

The report of the birthday celebrations in the Post Boy, 5-7 February 1706, makes no mention of a dance by Isaac, although it does say ‘At Night there was a fine Ball, and a Play acted at Court’. In his Roscius Anglicanus of 1708, John Downes adds that Edward Ravenscroft’s The Anatomist was the play ‘there being an Additional Entertainment in’t of the best Singers and Dancers, Foreign and English’. Downes names the dancers as ‘Monsieur L’Abbe; Mr Ruel; Monsieur Cherrier; Mrs Elford; Miss Campion; Mrs Ruel and Devonshire Girl’. The ‘Additional Entertainment’ may have been a musical piece, England’s Glory composed by James Kremberg, inserted into The Anatomist in place of The Loves of Mars and Venus (which had been given with the play at its first performance in 1696). This provided plenty of opportunities for dancing and had Britannia as a central figure. Isaac’s The Britannia was likely to have been danced at the ball and, given the elaborate choreography and probably short rehearsal time, may well have been performed by two of the professional dancers – perhaps L’Abbé and Mrs Elford or Mr and Mrs Ruel (L’Abbé and Du Ruel were both French, while Mrs Elford and Mrs Du Ruel were English).

The publication of the music for The Britannia was advertised by John Walsh in the Post Man for 9-12 February 1706. No such record has been found for the publication of the dance itself in notation, although May 1706 has been suggested as a possible date for its appearance. The Daily Courant for 23 April 1706 advertised that ‘This Day is publish’d’ Orchesography (Weaver’s translation of Feuillet’s Choregraphie), while the Post Man for 7-9 May 1706 similarly advertised Weaver’s A Treatise of Time and Cadence in Dancing (his translation of the ‘Traité de la Cadance’ in the 1704 Recueil of Pecour’s ‘meillieures Entrées de Ballet’). The May advertisement refers to Orchesography but says nothing about the collection of Isaac’s ball dances. However, the Daily Courant for 25 June 1706 advertised it for publication ‘Next Week’ as the ‘Second Part’ of Orchesography – apparently after the separate publication in notation of The Britannia.

Could The Britannia have appeared as early as February 1706? Isaac’s dance for 1707, The Union, was advertised as published in notation on 6 February 1707 the Queen’s actual birthday. A copy of The Union now in the Euing Music Library of Glasgow University has an ‘Epistle Dedicatory’ from John Weaver to Mr Isaac bound with it but plainly not belonging to it. Weaver writes that Mr Isaac ‘encouraged my attempt [at dance notation] & in the following Dance has furnish’d me with the first Example that England has seen’. Towards the end of his ‘Epistle’, he adds:

‘Since therefore our Part of the World derives this first Essay from your Performance & Direction tis but just in me to let the World know it & to offer this first Fruit of my Labours to you by whose Encouragement I hope Success to my farther Endeavours, the effect of which I shall speedily give the World in a Treatise of Dancing; as also an Explanation of this Art, with a Collection of all the Dances perform’d at the Balls at Court, compos’d by you & now taught by the Masters throughout the Kingdom, all which I am preparing for the Press.’

Weaver makes no reference to the dance being a ‘royal’ choreography but perhaps he did not need to, for the now lost title page (perhaps with other preliminaries) would have said enough. The title The Britannia was, of course, in itself a fulsome compliment to the Queen.

I have recently been learning The Britannia, as best I can as I work alone on these dances, and I have very much enjoyed trying to master the complexities of its choreography. As I have said before, Isaac’s compositions are very different to those of his contemporary Guillaume-Louis Pecour – even though the two men may well have had a shared early training in la belle danse. The Britannia has three sections: the opening is in triple time, with a musical structure AA (A=10); this is followed by a bourrée, also AA (A=14); and a concluding minuet which is a musical rondeau AABACAA barred in 3 (A=B=C=8). The dance has 104 bars of music in all. I have written about it previously in four posts, listed at the end of this piece. The choreography exhibits to the full Isaac’s complex ornamentations, his favourite pas composés (many of his own creation), his teasing use of figures and orientations and, of course, his customary wit and liveliness.

The couple begin the dance facing the presence but immediately turn to face each other and then make a half-turn to face away. They begin their passage downstage facing each other again and moving sideways. The bourrée section begins (on plate 3) with them facing the presence (they are still ‘proper’)  and then travelling forwards and away from each other on a diagonal, before completing a half-circle to face each other across the dancing space (or perhaps not, the notation shows the woman in that position while the man apparently faces upstage. The omission of a quarter-turn sign on his ensuing contretemps is surely a mistake).

The minuet begins with the couple facing each other across the dancing space (again ‘proper’) before travelling diagonally towards the centre line but away from each other (the woman upstage and the man downstage) with a pas de menuet à trois mouvements. They then dance a variation on the contretemps du menuet on a right line away from each other. The figure seems to be an inversion of one used in the bourrée, where they travel towards one another. Here are both versions.

I have already written about the minuet to The Britannia, but it is worth mentioning again the closing figures in which the couple take both hands, finish their half-circle facing each other and then do a quarter-turn pirouette to face the presence before making a half turn to perform a jetté upstage. They do not turn back to the presence until their very last coupé.

In this dance, Isaac seizes the opportunity to repeat steps (with some variation) within the different sections. There are the paired jettés-chassés in the opening triple-time section, the bourrée and the minuet, which can be found on plates 1, 5 and 8 of the notation. Here is the example from plate 1.

There is the pas de bourrée emboîté to plié with a hop in the bourrée, incorporated into a variation on the contretemps du menuet in the minuet (and used twice in both cases), which can be found on plates 4, 6, 7 and 12 of the notation. Here is the example from plate 4 (the bourrée, on the left) and from plate 7 (the minuet, on the right).

One of the aspects that make Isaac’s duets so demanding but still fun to dance is his rhythmic variety. There is one sequence in the C section of the minuet that always makes me smile. It has a hop followed by a coupé battu in the first two bars and then four demi-coupés in the second two. This little motif is then repeated on the other foot. The dancers face one another, then do a quarter-turn to travel sideways towards each other on a diametrical line, before turning their backs and repeating the whole sequence in the opposite direction. Here it is.

You will observe that, although this is a minuet, the couple are on opposite feet in mirror symmetry.

The Britannia, even more than Isaac’s other dances, raises questions about dancing at the English court in the years around 1700. The title of the duet and the occasion of its first performance suggest formality and seriousness, if not grandeur, the choreography delivers something quite different.

Previous posts:

Mr Isaac’s Six Dances

Mr Isaac’s Choreography: The Six Dances – Opening and Closing Figures

Mr Isaac’s Choreography: The Six Dances – Motifs and Steps

Mr Isaac’s Minuets

References:

Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson. ‘England’s Glory and the Celebrations at Court for Queen Anne’s Birthday in 1706’, Theatre Notebook, 62.1 (2008), 7-19.

John Downes. Roscius Anglicanus, ed. Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume (London, 1987), p. 98.

Meredith Ellis Little, Carol G. Marsh La Danse Noble: an Inventory of dances and Sources (Williamstown, 1992), [1707]-Unn.

William C. Smith. A Bibliography of the Musical Works Published by John Walsh during the Years 1695-1720 (London, 1968), nos. 196, 207.

English Court Balls, 1685 – 1702

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Back in 2019, I wrote a couple of posts about dancing at the English court – The Restoration Court Ball and Catherine of Braganza: a Dancing Queen. Recent research has taken me back to the topic of court balls and I thought I would pursue birthday balls in particular up to the accession of Queen Anne. Charles II’s queen undoubtedly helped to establish the convention of balls to celebrate royal birthdays following the Restoration in 1660. As I said in my post about her, the first ball that we know of celebrating Catherine of Braganza’s birthday was held on 15 November 1666, some four years after her arrival and marriage. Several others are known from subsequent years.

By contrast, there is evidence for only one ball in honour of Charles II’s birthday, held on 29 May 1675. There may be several reasons for this (not least that the King’s restoration coincided with his birthday) but the lack of such celebrations is still worth further research.

Charles II died on 6 February 1685 and was succeeded by his brother James, Duke of York. James II was crowned on 23 April 1685 and the Hall Theatre at Whitehall Palace was apparently first prepared for a ball the following October. The new King’s birthday was on 14 October, while that of his Queen Mary of Modena was on 5 October.

Preparations for a ball in the Hall Theatre are recorded in October 1686, but there are no indications of similar work the following year. By October 1688, Britain was in crisis – William of Orange landed at Torbay on 5 November and on 23 December James II sailed to exile in France.

Researchers seem to have paid little attention to court balls during the reign of William III and Mary II, although surviving evidence indicates that such entertainments continued. The couple were reported to have danced at a ‘greate Ball’ held at the court of Charles II on 15 November 1677, not long after their marriage on 4 November. Despite his evident seriousness, William of Orange is reported to have been a good dancer.

Following their joint acceptance of the throne on 13 February 1689 and their coronation on 11 April that year, it was several months before court entertainments settled into a pattern. There was a ball to celebrate William III’s birthday on 4 November 1689, the first of what would become a series. There seems to have been no parallel entertainment for Mary II’s birthday on 30 April the following year, or indeed in later years, although the Queen apparently hosted a ball for her sister Princess Anne’s birthday on 6 February 1691. William III’s birthday was accompanied by a ball at Whitehall Palace in November 1691, November 1693 and November 1694. There may well have been a ball in November 1692 as well but direct evidence that would confirm this does not survive.

The death of Queen Mary II on 28 December 1694 brought court entertainments to a halt. In November 1695 there was no ball for the birthday of the widowed King. In November 1696, William III’s sister-in-law Princess Anne – who had taken on her late sister’s role of court ‘hostess’ – gave a ball for the King’s birthday and there were further such balls in 1697, 1698 and 1699.

Princess Anne’s birthday was celebrated by a ball at Kensington House on 6 February 1698, although this seems to have been an isolated occasion. I have recently been investigating some of the choreographies by Mr Isaac, dancing master to Princess Anne, and it is possible that those that can plausibly be dated to the 1690s include some that were originally performed at the birthday balls for William III.

It is worth reiterating that the birthday balls that were a feature of Queen Anne’s reign and continued throughout the ensuing Georgian era had their beginning in the 1660s, perhaps under the auspices of the royal dancing master Jerome Gahory (Mr Isaac’s uncle). William III himself tacitly acknowledged the importance of French dancing at his court, continuing the precedent set by Charles II, when Le Palais des Plaisirs was given at Kensington House in 1698 and again when the French dancers Claude Ballon and Anthony L’Abbé danced there before him in 1699. L’Abbé was Isaac’s brother-in-law and would continue the line of royal dancing masters when he was appointed to that post by George I around 1715.

Further research among a range of primary sources is needed on this topic. For this post, I have mainly relied on the following secondary sources:

John van der Kiste. William and Mary (Stroud, 2008)

Anne Somerset. Queen Anne: the politics of passion (London, 2012)

Eleanore Boswell. The Restoration court stage, 1660-1702 (London, 1966). Reprint of the 1932 ed.

A register of English theatrical documents 1660-1737, compiled and ed. Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume. 2 vols. (Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1991)

See also:

Moira Goff. ‘The testament and last will of Jerome Francis Gahory’, Early Music, 38.4 (November 2010), pp. 537-542

Jennifer Thorp. ‘Monsieur L’Abbé and Le Palais des Plaisirs: a new source for a London spectacle’, Proceedings of the SDHS Conference 2010, pp. 335-343.

Mr Isaac’s ‘The Favorite A Chaconne Danc’d by her Majesty’

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I have been learning Mr Isaac’s The Favorite, described on its first plate as ‘A Chaconne Danc’d by her Majesty’. This duet was one of the six notated choreographies included in A Collection of Ball-Dances perform’d at Court published in 1706 by John Weaver and perhaps intended to accompany Orchesography, Weaver’s translation of Feuillet’s Choregraphie. ‘Her Majesty’ was, of course, Queen Anne, although by the time of the dance’s appearance in notation poor health had forced her to give up dancing. Mr Isaac has an idiosyncratic choreographic style and his ballroom duets shed important light on court culture under the late Stuart monarchs, so I thought it would be worth looking more closely at this dance.

The Favorite is actually in two parts, for it is a chaconne followed by a bourée. The music was first published in Amsterdam in 1688 and it appeared as ‘the new French Dance’ in 1690 in the sixth edition of Apollo’s Banquet. When it was reissued by John Walsh around 1712, the title page named the composer as ‘Mr. Paisible’. The chaconne has three variations, which are then repeated, giving 64 bars in all. The bourée has the structure AAAABB and a petite reprise of four bars to give 36 bars. At 80 bars, the dance seems long for a ballroom choreography intended for performance at court but Isaac’s other dances in A Collection of Ball-Dances are mostly the same or even longer (the exception is The Richmond at only 52 bars).

This dance probably dates to the years around 1690, when the music was first published. Princess Anne (as she then was) hosted a ball for William III’s birthday in November 1688, while her sister Queen Mary II gave a dance for the Princess’s own birthday in February 1691. Both were occasions when Anne (then between pregnancies) might have performed before the assembled court a duet specially created by her dancing master.

Can this notated choreography tell us anything about Isaac’s approach to choreographing these dances of display or Princess Anne’s dancing skills? The notation shows that Isaac used a basic vocabulary of steps throughout the two parts of the dance, although he sometimes combined them in ways that required particular skill from his dancers. For example, the first plate includes two balancés. The first ends in first position on beat two, with a pause on beat three, while the second has a battu on the second beat with an extension of the working leg in the air on beat three (as a preparation for the pas tombé and jetté in the next bar). It is a point for debate whether the Princess would have balanced on the ball of each foot in turn or performed these balancés on a flat foot. The fifth plate, with notation for the bourée, includes several bars which have two coupés travelling sideways. Much practice is needed to execute these fast-moving steps clearly and correctly.

Isaac ornaments only one of Princess Anne’s steps, the coupé avec ouverture de jambe in bar 22 of the chaconne, which has a pas battu around the ankle before the working leg opens towards the fourth position. There are five bars within the chaconne in which the man’s steps have either a pas battu or a rond de jambe. Such explicit ornamentation of the man’s steps, but not the woman’s, occurs in other notated dances by Isaac.

The chaconne has some 17% of steps with small jumps within them, whereas the bourée has around 44%. The steps most often used throughout the two parts of The Favorite are the pas de bourée, with its final jetté, the contretemps and (in the bourée section) the pas de sissonne. Isaac also repeats sequences in both the chaconne and the bourée.

The figures in The Favorite hint that this dance is not simply an abstract display. One of Isaac’s repeated motifs has the dancers coming together and then parting (or vice-versa) across the dancing space. They first do this at the very beginning, with a coupé sideways and a tems de courante forwards, before travelling towards the presence according to convention. The following figure has the dancers travelling sideways away from the presence – the only extended sequence of sideways movement in the dance – which allowed them to face the spectators who would have surrounded them as they moved. These figures can clearly be seen in the first plate, even if you don’t read Beauchamp-Feuillet notation.

They begin the third variation of the chaconne back-to-back, with the woman (Princess Anne) facing the presence – her previous step (a contretemps forwards) can be seen just beneath the word ‘Majesty’ on the notation above. Both perform a coupé battu with a plié on the beat. This has the effect of a bow or curtsey towards those watching at each end of the room, before the dancers turn to face one another and come together. They then turn to their right for a more extended sequence in which they travel apart before turning to come together again.

Apart from the occasional mistakes in the notation, the practice of crowding several figures onto a single page can make it difficult to read. The Favorite has five plates of notation, with plates three and five being the busiest (with 32 bars and 28 bars of music and dance respectively). The second half of the chaconne (notated in full on plate three) begins with a double version of the approach and retreat motif. The dancers first turn towards each other and then away before continuing to travel apart and then return, moving on shallow diagonals. Isaac repeats this theme of retreat and approach twice more with another variation, as he places the dancers side-by-side to face the presence. The chaconne ends with the couple turning to face one another across the dancing space. They have been in mirror symmetry (dancing on opposite feet) for most of it, but the woman does a tems de courante and the man a coupé to begin the bourée in axial symmetry.

I don’t want to go into too much detail, so I will skip to the second plate of the bourée which contains three-quarters of its notated steps.

After two circular figures, the dancers can be seen facing one another up and down the dancing space – the man is nearest the presence with his back to it, while the woman faces him. There must be some distance between them as they have two travelling steps to come together (Beauchamp-Feuillet notation does not show figures with spatial accuracy). They dance in a circle, taking right hands, and then travel away from each other and back again in another instance of the retreat and return motif. Isaac’s repeated use of two coupés in a bar (mentioned earlier) can be seen to either side of the page, about two-thirds from the bottom, then to either side of the centre and finally about a third from the bottom of the page – just before the dancers begin their final sequence of steps to the petite reprise which take them to the back of the dancing space before they turn to face the presence with a coupé soutenu, which presumably precedes their final bow (not included on the notation).

I have enjoyed working on Isaac’s The Favorite. It isn’t a difficult dance technically but it certainly isn’t easy either. It would be rewarding to be able to work on it with a partner and a musician or two, to explore the interpretative possibilities of both music and dance and see how the choreography might work in performance. The steps and figures in these five plates of notation suggest that Isaac’s choreography had wit as well as elegance and liveliness.

England’s Royal Dancing Masters, 1660-1714

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When Charles II was restored to his throne in 1660, it seems that he lost little time in appointing a royal dancing master. The patent for Jerome Francis Gahory as ‘dancing master to his Majesty’ is dated 19 April 1665, but other evidence suggests that he had taken up his post by Christmas 1660. He was the first of a series of dancing masters employed to teach members of the royal family during the late 17th and 18th centuries. This post looks at the period 1660 to 1714. A second post will look at 1714 to 1788.

Gahory was sworn as a ‘Groom of her Majesty’s Privy Chamber’ on 21 July 1663 but, as my post on Catherine of Braganza suggests, he must have begun teaching her some months earlier. A later document specifies his duties as ‘attending and teaching the art of dancing to the King and Queen at all times when he shall be required’.Gahory may well have been required to decide on and teach the dances given at court balls and even been involved in the more elaborate court entertainments that included dancing. Various records suggest that he held his post until at least 1688, and that he was called upon to teach royal scholars even later.

In Edmund Pemberton’s An Essay for the Further Improvement of Dancing, published in 1711, Gahory is mentioned in the dedication of part two as ‘the admirable Mr. Goree’. The dedicatee is the Duchess of Buckingham and Normanby who is described as his ‘last Masterpiece’ and Pemberton tells us that Gahory ‘had the Honour to teach eight or nine Crown’d Heads, and likewise most of our Quality’ during his long career. Apart from Charles II and his Queen, who were these ‘Crown’d Heads’? He certainly taught three more Queens, for in 1669 he is listed among the officers and servants to James, Duke of York’s eldest daughter Princess Mary (later Queen Mary II) and in 1677 he is recorded as dancing master to the Duchess of York (Mary of Modena, later James II’s Queen) and the Duke’s younger daughter Princess Anne (later Queen Anne). By implication, he may have taught the Duke of York (later James II) himself and perhaps even William of Orange (later William III and known as a good dancer) when he married Princess Mary in 1677. Gahory had begun his career in Paris, where he appeared in the Ballet du Dérèglement des Passions in 1648. Might he also have given lessons to the young Louis XIV? His last royal pupil seems to have been Anne’s son William, Duke of Gloucester, to whom he gave lessons in 1694. Jerome Gahory died, a very rich man, in 1703.

In 1681, the reversion of Gahory’s post was granted to Francis Thorpe who thereby became his designated successor. Quite by accident, I discovered that Francis Thorpe was the famous Mr Isaac. The clue lay in Gahory’s will, for he left the residue of his English estate (he also had a considerable estate in France) to ‘Francis Thorpe his nephew (known by the name of Isaac)’. Francis Thorpe was the son of Gahory’s sister and Isaac Thorpe. His father, named as ‘Monsr. Isac’ was described in 1653 as one of the best dancing masters in Paris. Francis Thorpe may have used the name ‘Mr Isaac’ as a compliment to his father as well as to show his lineage with its associated status. Isaac Thorpe may have danced alongside Gahory in the 1648 ballet de cour mentioned above. Francis Thorpe seems to have danced (under the name Isaac) in the French comédies-ballets Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670) and Psyché (1671).  By 1673 the younger ‘Mr Isaac’ was in England and in 1675 he danced in the English court masque Calisto.

Isaac Thorpe died in London in 1681, so references to the dancing master ‘Mr Isaac’ after that date must refer to his son. There is evidence for him teaching several young women, some of who appeared at court, including Katherine Booth, who may have danced a solo at a birth night ball in 1689, and Anne South, one of the Maids of Honour, in 1694. Oddly, there seems to be no direct evidence of him teaching Princess Anne, apart from the testimony of John Essex in his Preface to The Dancing-Master in 1728.

‘The late Mr. Isaac, who had the Honour to teach and instruct our late most excellent and gracious Queen when a young Princess, first gained the Character and afterwards supported that Reputation of being the prime Master in England for forty Years together: He taught the first Quality with Success and Applause, and was justly stiled the Court Dancing-Master, therefore might truly deserve to be called the Gentleman Dancing-Master.’ (p. xi)

Princess Anne married Prince George of Denmark in 1683 and thereafter was very often pregnant, so perhaps Mr. Isaac taught her (on behalf of his uncle) before then. Mr Isaac is now best known for his series of annual dances, published in notation between 1706 and 1716, several of which were created to celebrate Queen Anne’s birthday and probably performed at the birth night balls given at court. He died in 1721 and was buried at St James’s Church in Piccadilly.

After the death of William, Duke of Gloucester in 1700 there were no young princes or princesses for England’s royal dancing master to teach. This changed with the death of Queen Anne and accession of George I in 1714. I will turn to the later royal dancing masters in my next post.

So far as I know, there is no portrait of Jerome Francis Gahory, but Francis Thorpe – Mr Isaac – was painted by Louis Goupy. The original portrait apparently does not survive, but it was engraved by George White and published early in the 18th century.

Mr Isaac