This is the first in a series of four posts that reproduce the introduction from what was to have been the Schubert chapter in the book manuscript. The original version of this text was written nearly five years ago; a few of its details have already been updated in previous posts. As it stands, the text has been edited mainly for length.
Introduction. What Schubert found when he began composing waltzes about 1812 was not a simple, innocent country dance, as it is sometimes portrayed in an attempt to put as much distance between mass art and high art as possible. The waltz, and related turning dances, were primarily couple dances with a long history in the southern Germanophone countries. To be sure, they were still associated with rural or village settings in the early eighteenth century (Harris-Warwick) but, thanks to that association, they had appeared in pastoral settings of court theatricals as early as the seventeenth century. For their subsequent history, the decade of the 1760s was a critical juncture: figures based on the waltz were introduced into French contredanses, and it was in this context that the dance rapidly became popular throughout Europe (Nettl, "Waltz" 75). Elizabeth Aldrich attributes the addition of waltzing figures to the French contredanse to Marie Antoinette, who came to Paris in 1770 ("Social Dancing," 130-1). It is entirely possible that her influence enhanced the popularity of the contredanse allemande, but its figures had been in general use for at least five years before that.
By the 1790s, the waltz had thoroughly merged with the already existing middle and lower class dances. In Vienna (and elsewhere in the Austrian empire), this trajectory to a broad popularity at all levels of society was unquestionably aided by the Emperor's opening of halls controlled by him to public dances after 1772 (Litschauer, 19; Aldrich, "Social Dancing" 121). (NB: For obvious reasons, the information given here focuses on the Austrian Empire. For an excellent summary of social dancing and its contexts in Warsaw during the same period, see McKee, 107-17.)
Despite their acceptance in upperclass (including aristocratic) circles, the turning dances were regarded by some as troublesome because they were seen as sexually exciting or lascivious. There are several reasons for this concern.
First, the waltzing dances were path-breaking as the first of a long series of popular nineteenth and early twentieth century partner or couple dances. The most common form of the menuet was also a couple dance but the partners never (or rarely ever) touched one another. Indeed, the opposition of the proper, stately menuet to the "uncivilized" bourgeois waltz was basic to criticism of the latter well into the nineteenth century.
Second, the ländler, with its moderate tempo and often elaborate figures with intertwining arms, had traditionally been regarded as a lovers' dance (Litschauer and Deutsch, 48-9).
Finally, and perhap most importantly, at the more rapid tempos associated with the deutscher, the two dancers needed to hold each other continuously in order to execute the whirling movements, which combined a compact turning figure requiring two bars inside larger circular movements down a linear or spherical line of dance (McKee, 123; Yaraman, 16-19).
One has to wonder whether those who criticized the waltz ever danced it themselves. At any but the slowest tempi, the two partners must keep a certain physical distance in order to execute the steps fluidly and must not look directly at each other or they will rapidly experience vertigo. In 1836, a dancing instructor named Donald Walker wrote "Vertigo is one of the great inconveniences of the waltz" (quoted in Aldrich, Ballroom, 154). It was not just dizziness, however, but specifically the sight of young women fainting or staggering due to vertigo that disturbed some observers and helped to give the waltz its bad reputation.
References:
Aldrich, Elizabeth. "Social Dancing in Schubert's World." In Raymond Erickson, ed. Schubert's Vienna, 119-40. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
Aldrich, Elizabeth. From the Ballroom to Hell: Grace and Folly in Nineteenth-Century Dance. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991.
Harris-Warwick, Rebecca. "Dance (5)." Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy. Accessed 30 July 2004. .
Litschauer, Walburga, and Walter Deutsch. Schubert und das Tanzvergnügen. Vienna: Holzhausen, 1997.
Litschauer, Walburga. "Dances of the Biedermeier." In McKay, Elizabeth Norman, and Nicholas Rast, eds. Schubert durch die Brille [Proceedings of The Oxford Bicentenary Symposium 1997], 19-25. Internationales Franz Schubert Institut--Mitteilungen, no.21. Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1998.
McKee, Eric. "Dance and the Music of Chopin: The Waltz." In Goldberg, Halina, ed. The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, 106-61. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
Yaraman, Sevin H. Revolving Embrace: The Waltz as Sex, Steps, and Sound. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2002.
