Monday, March 1, 2010

More to Papillons and the single-strain dance

Yesterday I referred to "floating strains" in Schumann's Papillons, by which I meant individual dance strains (usually 8 bars) that "take the place" of a complete dance in reprise sections of dance sets. Papillons does indeed contain such a floating strain, but it acts more like an interrupting reminiscence than a reprise within a dance set: it's the second strain of n6, which reappears in the middle of n10.

As it happens, however, n6 itself is built as a miniaturized dance set in ABACA design (or dance with two trios), where all five sections are single strains.