More on Forms with Refrains (3)

This is a follow-up to the post on the contredanse La Griel. I wrote there: "Contredanse folios published by the dancing master La Cuisse and reproduced on the Library of Congress American Memory site contain two remarkable fold-out graphics that collate music, text and graphic descriptions of figures, and drawings of the dancers."

La Griel, of course, is one: La Bionni is the other. Virtually everything said in the earlier post about La Griel applies equally to La Bionni, including the varying lengths of the figures and the grand rond or rond ordinaire danced to the first strain and its repetition. The music as performed (five strains with repeats, in an ABACA design) is reproduced below. (Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.)

From all this, three points may be made. First, it is hard to overemphasize the importance of the more or less formal (or ritualized) frame for the dance (in the rond ordinaire at the beginning and courtesies at the end). Second, it is equally hard to overemphasize the importance of the refrain. Third, although the musician is tempted to say that the refrain "structures" the music, that is only half the story, because a refrain in the music by no means signals a repetition of a figure in the dance.

More on Forms with Refrains (2)

Contredanse folios published by the dancing master La Cuisse and reproduced on the Library of Congress American Memory site contain two remarkable fold-out graphics that collate music, text and graphic descriptions of figures, and drawings of the dancers. For La Griel, I have reproduced the music below, labeled the strains and phrases, and then pulled out and labeled the music as it is shown in the large graphic. Note that the music is played as marked in the score, en rondeau, and dance figures vary in length from 2 bars to 8 (a gap in the music notation corresponds to a new figure in the dance). The greater complexity (compared to the long-dance style) is possible with a smaller group of dancers in the more formal quadrille square-dance structure, which was broadly speaking a compromise between the skilled, formal couple dancing of the menuet and the informal, highly social English long dance.

Music as distributed over the 8 figures of the dance:

La Cuisse published his contredanse folios in the mid-1760s, the French style became popular in Vienna in the early 1770s at the latest, and Bülow's manuscript compilation was made in the early 1780s -- therefore it is reasonable to assume that we are speaking about closely related practices. By Schubert's time, things had changed -- the menuet was often reduced to a comical Grossvater dance, and the formal quadrille had by and large been superseded by the decidedly less formal cotillon, or else adopted the latter's tendency to mix dancing with party games. More than ever, the design of a dance was in the hands of the caller or lead dancer (Vortanzer), and the music was shaped accordingly (and sometimes on the spot). As Schubert was playing for cotillons, then, he would take his cues from the Vortanzer (from the reminiscences, this was usually Josef von Spaun).

In this environment, the reprise was the principal device available for an aural structuring of the dance to complement the sequence of dance figures; the refrain, on the other hand, was a way of extending and enriching a particular sequence. The refrain and musical coda are obviously closely related -- the only real difference being that the coda usually consists of stereotypical cadence gestures mixed with material from the preceding sections , where the refrain is substantially new material. It's entirely possible that the refrain was not danced -- along the lines of the published waltzes of the 1830s and later, an instrumental introduction was likely (whether a prelude in the old manner, a vamp to establish rhythm, or a more elaborate piece) and -- if the Vortanzer directed it -- a final strain not danced was possible. One can, for example, easily imagine the dancers standing and clapping in rhythm to the yodeling refrain of D734n11.

The comments above can be regarded as an addendum to the post on performance designs.

More on Forms with Refrains

This is an addendum to last week's post on forms with refrains. Here are two contredanses from a manuscript collection preserved in the Royal Library, Copenhagen: the volume is simply labeled "Dances 1782-84" with the name Johan Bülow: a PDF file can be accessed through IMSLP.

Note that the first piece has two strains and four dance figures are described (that's one per strain with repetitions).

The second contredanse has three strains and six corresponding figures in the dance.

From the instructions (especially the mention of three couples), it seems clear that the music is intended for dancing in the English long-dance manner, not the square or round forms of the French quadrille. That means the music as given is probably only the barest outline of what actually happened when the music was played for dancing. (At the least, one would expect the strains to be played en rondeau, that is, with repetitions of the first strain following each successive strain.) On the other hand, the arrangements are clearly for keyboard (others in this and related collections are for violin; a few are marked "Flauto"): these could not be used in a hall but instead for private dancing occasions, including dance lessons for members of the Royal family or others in the Court. The simplicity of the given design would suit the needs of pedagogy.

Forms with refrains

D734n11 is a 16 bar dance with an additional eight-bar segment added onto the second strain. These violinistic "Ländler codas" were a trademark of the genre and of course are very closely related to the yodeling figures placed at the ends of songs (even into the 20th century, these were common -- in the United States, they are probably most familiar from Western songs as performed by Roy Rogers). (Click on the thumbnail to see the file at original size.)

A version of this design is used by Hummel as well for the theme of his Tyroler-Lied mit Variationen, op. 118. The example below shows only the primo part. The repeat of section A (which modulates to the mediant, btw) is written out; the second strain begins with a contrasting middle, but a reprise is replaced by an 8-bar Ländler coda that is repeated rather forcefully.

The "extra" segment is a separate strain specifically identified as "refrain" in the theme for Henri Herz's variation set Nouvelle Tyrolienne, Op. 154. Note also the pedal point bass, which invokes a folk style.

Finally, the somewhat free concatenation of strains suggested by the Ländler coda is still evident in this waltz-style exercise from Friedrich Wieck's Piano Studies. The first two strains give a simple A-BA design. The third strain as it is given sounds like a coda, but performance practice for dancing or listening might also make of it another secondary strain, to be followed by A (even if that's not indicated in the score). The fourth strain is obviously a (short) trio.