CHAPTER IV.

THE DANCE AND ITS DEVELOPMENT.

I. MUSICAL CHARACTER OF DANCES.

In the last chapter we studied the most important applications of the "polyphonic" style, which originated in music for voices, to the music of instruments. We saw how in such music the attention of the composer was divided among several equally important voices or parts, and how much he made of the principle of imitation; and in connection with the fugue we remarked that the very complex interweaving of the different voices in such music, one beginning before another leaves off, and all together making an intricate web, presented certain difficulties to the listener accustomed to the more modern style, in which a single voice has the melody, and stops short at regular intervals, giving the hearer a chance to draw breath, as it were, and renew attention for what is coming next. Listening to modern music is like reading a series of short sentences, each clearly and definitely ended by its own full stop. Listening to the old polyphony is more like reading one of those long and involved sentences of De Quincey or Walter Pater, in which the clauses are intricately interwoven and mutually dependent, so that we can get the sense only by a long-sustained effort of attention.

This more involved style, suitable to voices, but less natural to instruments, had historically a very long life. Much of the instrumental music of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries was in fact nothing but a transference to instruments of music really conceived for voices. Thus, for example, in the sixteenth century, when madrigals and canzonas, which were compositions for voices in the polyphonic style but of a more secular character than church music, were exceedingly popular, the composers for stringed instruments and for the then very fashionable lutes, "when they wanted something of a superior order, ... simply played madrigals, or wrote music in imitation of any of the varieties of choral music, not realizing that without the human tones ... which gave expression to the rising and falling of the melodic material, the effect was pointless and flat."[10] Even Bach and Handel, in the eighteenth century, were, by their deeply-rooted habit of _thinking vocally_, in some degree hampered in the search for a purely instrumental style. Instrumental music, having to get along without words, must find some principle of coherence, some kind of definite design, which will make it intelligible without the help of words, and enable it to stand on its own feet.

And here comes in the importance of folk-song, and of the folk-dance which grew up beside it, to our modern instrumental music. For both song and dance pointed the way to such a principle of independent intelligibility, through definite balance of phrases (see Chapter I), and through contrasts and resemblances of _key_ in the various phrases and sections of a composition. Music intended to accompany songs or dances _had_ to consist of balanced phrases of equal length--in the case of songs, because it had to reproduce the verse structure of the words, which of course were composed in regular stanzas of equal lines, and in the case of dances, because it had to afford a basis for symmetrical movements of the body. And when once it was thus divided up into equal phrases, it took musicians but a short time to find that these phrases could be effectively contrasted, and made the parts of larger musical organisms, by being put into different keys (as we have seen in the instances of modulation cited in Chapters II and III). How vital these principles of structure in balanced phrases and sections, and of contrast of keys, are to the entire modern development of music, we shall realize fully only as we proceed.

Again, both song and dance have proved supremely important to the development of the homophonic style (one melody, with accompaniment not itself melodic). In the case of song the reason is obvious. A song rendered by a solo voice, with instrumental accompaniment, naturally takes the homophonic style, since it would be highly artificial to make the subordinate element in the combination as prominent as the chief one. Dance is less inevitably homophonic than song; indeed many dances, as we shall see, are to a greater or less degree polyphonic; but nevertheless the tendency toward homophony is always apparent. In the first place, the interweaving of many melodies would tend to obscure the division into definite phrases, since an inner melody might sometimes fill up the pause in the main one, as we saw it constantly doing in the fugue. Secondly, the mode of performing dances tends to give prominence to a single melody. The old dances were generally played by one melodic instrument, such as a violin or hautboy, accompanied by chords on an instrument of the lute or guitar family, and frequently by a drum to strengthen the accents. Such a combination affords but one prominent "voice," and does not lend itself naturally to polyphonic writing.

[Music: score] FIGURE XV.

Viens dans ce bo- ca- ge, belle A- min - te, Sans contrain - te L'on y for - me des vœux; Viens, Viens dans ce bo - ca - ge, belle A- min - te, Il est fait pour les plai-sirs et les jeux:

The "Tambourin," for instance, an old French dance of Provence, was played by one performer, the melody with one hand on the "galoubet," a kind of pipe or flageolet, and the accompanying rhythm with the other on a small drum. The quotation in Figure XV, taken from Wekerlin's collection, "Echos du Temps Passé" (Vol. III), is a good example of this ancient dance. In this arrangement for piano, the left hand imitates the drum, and the right hand the "galoubet" or pipe. This quotation illustrates the common use of dance melodies in songs. Many primitive airs were so used in the olden times.

II. PRIMITIVE DANCES.

The rude dances which spring up spontaneously in all communities, savage as well as civilized, and of which we in America have examples in the war-dances of Indians and the cake-walks of negroes, are thus seen to be pregnant of influence on developed musical art, no less than the folk-songs which we discussed in the second chapter, and the more academic music in the polyphonic style which we treated in the third. Both songs and dances, indeed, sometimes enter into artistic music even in their crude form, but in most cases composers treat them with a certain freedom, and in various ways enhance their effectiveness, as Haydn, for instance, treats the Croatian folk-tune "Jur Postaje," in the Andante of his "Paukenwirbel" Symphony. In Figure XVI the reader will see both the crude form of the tune and the shape into which Haydn moulds it for his purposes.

[Music: score] "Jur Postaje."

[Music: score] HAYDN'S Version.

FIGURE XVI.

In the long process of development which songs and dances thus undergo at the hands of composers, they of course lose to some extent their contrasting characters, until in modern music the dance and the song elements are as inextricably interwoven as the warp and the woof of a well-made fabric.

As imitation is only slightly available in homophonic music, the unity so vital to all art is attained in dances chiefly by transpositions of motives, often in systematic "sequences," by more or less exact balance of phrases, and by restatement after contrast. In crude examples these means are crudely used; in the work of masters they are treated with more subtlety and elasticity; but always a careful analysis will discover them. It will now prove enlightening to compare, from this point of view, three dance tunes of very different degrees of merit.

[Music: score] FIGURE XVII. A "Branle" or "Brawl" from Arbeau's Orchesographie, (1545).

Figure XVII shows an ancient "Branle" or "Brawl" of the sixteenth century, taken from Arbeau's "Orchesographie," published in 1545.

The strong meter, causing a distinct accent on the first note of each measure, will at once be noted, especially if it be contrasted with the more moderate accentuation of the folk-songs of Chapter II. Such strong meter is naturally characteristic of all dance tunes, intended as they are to guide and stimulate the regular steps of the dancer.

The phrase balance, though marked, is not absolutely regular, but the two two-measure phrases at the beginning and the single one at the end suffice to give an impression of pronounced symmetry. The six-measure phrase after the double-bar is generated by the sequential treatment of the little motive of measure 5.

This sequence (measures 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) is worthy of note because of the excessive length to which it is carried. Five repetitions are too many, and grow monotonous. A more skilful composer would have secured his unity without so great a sacrifice of variety--in a word, he would have treated a device good in itself with less crudity.

The exact repetition of measures 3-4 at the end is an effective use of restatement after contrast. Although the whole of the original theme is not given, there is enough of it to give the sense of orderliness in design.

A Gavotte in F-major by Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713), the famous violin virtuoso of the seventeenth century, printed in Augener's edition of Pieces by Corelli, will illustrate a distinctly higher stage in the treatment of a dance form. This is well worth a brief analysis.

EXAMPLE FOR ANALYSIS, No. 3.

_Corelli: Gavotte in F-Major._

Here the phrase balance, though entirely satisfying to the sense of rhythm, is much more elastic than in the brawl. The measure-lengths of the phrases are not all the same; they are as follows: 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2. This gives the tune an agreeable variety.

It will be noted, however, that the sequence is still treated rather fumblingly. In the three measures after the double-bar, the same motive is repeated thrice, each time higher than before, and to a fastidious ear the third repetition grows slightly wearisome.

On the whole, nevertheless, the gain in elasticity and freedom over the last example is marked.

The general structure and scheme of modulation in this little Gavotte of Corelli deserves careful attention, because it is in these respects typical of a very great number, indeed of the majority of the short dances of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is divided into two distinct halves, and while each deals with the same musical material, the two are strongly contrasted in the matter of key. The first begins in the home key and leaves it to end in a contrasted key, in the present case the "dominant." The second, beginning in the dominant, modulates back again to the home key, and ends there. This scheme, called by musicians "binary" or "two-part" form, is a very simple and natural one for short pieces of this kind, and is to be found in thousands of the movements of Corelli, Scarlatti, Couperin, Rameau, Purcell, Handel, Bach, and other masters of their day. It is even more common than the "ternary" form to which we shall come in a moment.

III. A BACH GAVOTTE.

If the reader will now compare with these two dances the Gavotte in the sixth English Suite of J. S. Bach, who had the advantage of living half a century later than Corelli (besides being an immeasurably greater genius), he will be amazed to see the power and originality with which a master can treat a traditional form.[11]

EXAMPLE FOR ANALYSIS, No. 4.

_Bach: Gavotte in D-Minor from the Sixth English Suite._

Before looking at matters of detail, we must notice the structure of the piece as a whole, since it is not only highly interesting in itself, but is an example--the first we have had on a large scale--of a type of construction that is perhaps more popular with musicians of all schools than any other.

This structural type is nothing but an application to an entire piece of that three-part form which we have seen in little in the Galician folk-song of Chapter I and in "Polly Oliver" in Chapter II, and to which we may now give the name of "ternary form," to distinguish it from the "binary form" discussed in Chapter III. Bach here writes two distinct gavottes, repeating the first after the second: so that Gavotte I is a _statement_, Gavotte II a _contrast_ (emphasized by change of key from minor to major), and the repeated Gavotte I a _restatement_. This practice is very frequent in Bach's suites, where we often find two courantes, two bourrées, two passepieds, two minuets, etc., combined in this way, the function of the second being to afford contrast to the first. In some instances the second of the pair is called "trio," probably because the earliest examples were written in three-voice harmony, or "musette," from the French word for "bagpipe," in reference to the drone bass imitating that instrument. (This is the case in the present gavotte, where the gavotte II bears the alternative name of musette.)

In the sonatas and symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, as we shall see later, this three-section structure is found in the minuet with trio, and in the scherzo with trio. Nor is it less common in modern music, occurring notably in the marches of Schubert, many of the short pieces of Schumann, in the polonaises and some of the nocturnes of Chopin, in the rhapsodies and intermezzos of Brahms, and in the lyric pieces of Grieg. Indeed, its naturalness and clearness inevitably commend it to all composers.

Looking more closely we see, again, that the same scheme is used by Bach in each of the two gavottes, _considered separately_. In the first, we note the structure A = measures 1-10, B = measures 11-27, A = measures 27-35; in the second we find, A = measures 1-10, B = measures 11-19, A = measures 19-28. The student should verify this analysis for himself.

Proceeding now to details, we notice first that Bach, supreme master of polyphony that he is, writes even a gavotte in such a way that each of its voices has its own melodic value. The gavotte itself is in three voices throughout, and the musette in two, and while these voices are not so purely melodic as in an invention or a fugue, and there is little strict imitation, yet the general effect is polyphonic rather than homophonic. In measures 27-31 the alto voice even has the theme.

The phrase balance is freer than even Corelli's, because Bach's mind is quicker to seize upon and work out the latent possibilities of his melodies. All begins regularly enough: the first four phrases are each two measures in length; but after the double-bar the "plot begins to thicken." First we find two more phrases just like the preceding ones (measures 11-13 and 13-15); but in the next phrase, begun in the same way, in measure 15, the yeast of Bach's fancy begins to work, and the melody broadens out in a series of evolutions, first in the soprano and later in the alto, not coming again to a point of rest (end of a phrase) until measure 23. This extension of a phrase through the germination or blossoming of the thought (in this case it all comes from the bit of melody in measure 7) is a matter of supreme importance in composition, and this instance of it, as well as another in measures 23-27, should be carefully studied by any one who desires to understand music. The power thus to develop or draw forth the hidden potentialities of his motives is one of the most important of all the gifts which go to make a composer. Still further instances of it should now be found by the student himself in the musette.

The artistic freedom and felicity of Bach's way of working is further illustrated by the manner in which, while using the general principle of the sequence as a means of giving his music unity of idea, he avoids those overliteral, mechanical transpositions of motive which we found in the more primitive dances. There is just the contrast here that there is between a poor speaker, who keeps repeating the same word or phrase with futile emphasis, and the man of real eloquence, who follows a train of thought no less closely, but manages constantly to cast his ideas in new phraseology and fresh figures of speech, so that the variety of what he says is quite as striking as its fundamental unity.

The element of variety introduced into the contrast-section of the gavotte (11-27), by the free modulation through several keys, should also be remarked. The plan of modulation is different from any we have yet had. Instead of beginning in the relative major (which would be the key of F), the section begins in the _dominant minor_ (A-minor). A good many keys are then touched upon before the tonic or home key is reached at the restatement (27-35), which, by a charming subtlety, begins with the theme in the alto instead of the soprano voice.

In all these matters we detect the workings of an original and inventive mind, which, far from being hampered by working in a traditional form, is stimulated to constantly new solutions of old problems, and so produces a piece of music at once perfectly clear and fascinatingly interesting.

In the next chapter we shall see how composers combined groups of such dances as this, with other pieces of a different character, into those suites which were the most popular forms of instrumental music in the eighteenth century.

SUGGESTIONS FOR COLLATERAL READING.

_Grove's Dictionary: article "Rhythm," and articles under names of various dances, as "Gavotte," "Allemande," "Courante," "Minuet," "Gigue," etc._

_Other examples of dances may be found in a collection of twenty-five old gavottes, published by Breitkopf and Härtel, and in a volume of miscellaneous old dances in the Litolff Edition._

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Parry: Evolution of the Art of Music, page 115.

[11] For this analysis, number all the measures and parts of measures consecutively, which will give 35 measure numbers in the Gavotte proper, and 28 in the second Gavotte or Musette.