Friday, October 31, 2014

Rising lines in an 18th century contredanse collection

As a follow-up to the recent post on a menuet from the Bacquoy-Guedon treatise (early 1780s), here is a [link to a PDF file] that lists and provides scores for multiple examples of rising lines in contredanses from collections preserved in the Royal Danish library. It is assumed that the dances come from published sources and were gathered into these volumes for court use. The collections are associated with Johan Bülow, court musician in Copenhagen in the late 18th century.

Here is one of the dances. Note that four figures are specified, which means the music will minimally be played twice in alternativo fashion, or ABAB. It's also quite possible that the first strain would be repeated at the end, in coda fashion. Since three couples (not four) are specified, it is possible that the instructions are meant for a long dance rather than a quadrille, meaning that the strains would be repeated multiple times (as often as necessary for all the dancers to complete the figures).