Dance and Dance Music of the 16th Century and Their Relations to Folk Dance and Folk

Music
Author(s): F. Hoerburger
Source: Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae , 1965, T. 7, Fasc. 1/4,
The Present Volume Contains the Papers Read at the International Folk Music Council
(IFMC) Conference Held in Budapest in August 1964 (1965), pp. 79-83
Published by: Akadémiai Kiadó

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 Dance and Dance Music
of the 16th Century and their Relations
to Folk Dance and Folk Music
by

F. HOERBURGER

Regensburg

The study of musical folklore teaches us that there is a

influence between the music of different social and educational strata
of society. To prove this in detail will be more difficult the further w
go back in the history, because we shall progressively lose our orientat
and our sources will be more and more incomplete.
Nevertheless, if I am attempting to show the relations betwee
dance and dance music of the higher cultural strata and that of the bas
strata, with special reference to the dance of the sixteenth century, I
doing this, first, because we can see that neither before nor after t
century is the interest of the higher strata in the dance and dance mu
of the lower strata in any way comparable or widespread; and seco
because it seems that, in the evolution of dance and dance music, t
sixteenth century is really important, for in it one period of evolut
ended and another began.
This upheaval of evolution was caused, as I see it, especially by t
invention of printing musical notes. Music ceased to be disseminated fr
mouth to mouth or from instrument to instrument; people were a
to buy printed music. Moreover, certain fundamental principles began
change. Instead of improvised minstrelsy and of more or less improvis
dancing, there was composed and prescribed dance and dance mus
Instead of free manipulation with formulas, we find the interpretat
of a prescribed form. This was the moment in history when instrumen
music began to be "ars musica", and when dance began to be "ball-ro
dance" or what we call in German Gesellschaftstanz.
But at the same time the sixteenth century seems to be a bridg
from the old evolution to the new one: there are old principles wh
are continued by new means. Especially is the old mixture of natio
styles, previously brought about by wandering minstrels, mixing
melodies and dances with their different elements, now, in the age

St. Musicologica VII. (1965)

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80 F. Hoerburger: Dance and Dance Music of the 16th Century

printed collections, continued by such means. It becomes customary to

carry printed dance and dance music from country to country.
For the history of music and dance this new kind of dissemation by
means of printed collections is a great asset. Up till the fifteenth century,
our sources of dance and dance music are very incomplete. But the
sixteenth century presents a wealth of materials for the first time.
Already at the beginning of the century some editors made use of the
new invention and printed anthologies of dance music, as for instance
Petrucci in Venice (1508), Attaignant in Paris (1529) and Tilman Susato
in Antwerp (1551). Many German collections of music for lute or for
keyboard, beginning with Hans Kotter in 1513, present a many sided
picture of the dance during this period. Great collections, for instance
Michael Praetorius' Terpsichore of 1612, look back once more at the
sixteenth century.
As regards the dance, we can see something similar. Up till then
there had been improvisational freedom, but now for the first time
there are fixed shapes. Up till then, dissemination by a simple imitation;
now, printed compendia. These printed textbooks not only reflect chan-
ging practise; they mean also a better knowledge for posterity.
There are two French authors especially to whom we owe a pretty
good knowledge of the dance in this century: Antonius de Arena with
his strange macaronic verses of 1536 and, more important, the great
Thoinot Arbeau with his famous Orche'sographie of 1588, in which he
pictures the dances of this century, with full descriptions and a number
of melodies.

Now, what does this mean, if we study these sources of comp

music and dance with regard to folk tradition?
First of all it seems to me important to state that everywher
music as well as in dance there is in the sixteenth century a general in
in folklore. From Northern Italy, for instance, we hear that nob
were not ashamed to dance together with peasants. Or, while in
fifteenth century jumping dances were danced only among the
strata of society, now in the sixteenth they are danced by courti
well. The so-called bassa danza, being characteristic for the whole fifte
century, now disappears in favour of the more popular alta danza
among those "high dances" there is the favourite Gaillarde, which ch
from a popular sturdiness and roughness to the shocking Volta, danced
by the Queen of England. Further, in the year 1565 Catherine of Me
arranged a festival in Bayonne with folk dance groups from every r
of France. And again, at the German courts foreign dances were dan

St. Musicologica VII. (1965)

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 F. Hoerburger: Dance and Dance Music of the 16th Century 81

a fact which can be traced in the famous music collections for the lute.
As dances came up from the basic strata of society to the court
and from unwritten freedom to the printed collection, there were bound
to be several changes. What were previously improvised forms were put
into a system. Moreover, the multiplicity of national and regional
styles were pressed into a rational scheme; they were, in effect, stylised,
unified.

These phenomena we can see in the dance as well as in the dance

music. The transformation from the musica usualis of the minstrels to
the ars musica of the composers reveals two different facts: this music
till then belonging exclusively to dance movements, now becomes m
or less independent. Some dance pieces become pieces of pure mus
changing their names: the pavane, for instance, becomes the intrad
In the well known "suite" the names of other dances are retained as,
for instance, the gavotte, the passepied, the sarabande. Praetorius in his
aforementioned Terpsichore says that those dances may be played "in
conviviis", which means these dances are only played as pieces of music,
they are danced to no longer.
On the other hand, written music acquired rational shapes, which is,
in a way, contrary to the very conception of "dance music", the latter
being essentially free in intonation, rhythm, melodic formula and so on -
being moreover exciting, even thrilling, by its "dirty play". Those ele-
ments are inevitably lost when dance music is no longer played for
dancing. But even in the dance, when arranged by a dancing master,
the music and the form of a dance may become rational and stylized.
I have spoken about general phenomena, which were derived in
the sixteenth century from folk music and accepted by and stylized in
the higher strata of society. There are, however, special forms as well.
There are two main examples. The first is the Gaillarde, which is so
characteristic of this period that Curt Sachs called the time between
1500 and 1650 the "period of the Gaillarde". This dance was the quick
and hopping second half of a bipartite whole. And as it expresses popular
gaiety, it came to be much loved in the sixteenth century, while during
the fifteenth century it had been the aversion of high society.
The other main example is the so-called branle (English brawl)
which was not a particular dance, but, as Cecil Sharp said, any species of
dance with a "quasi-folk character". At the beginning of the sixteenth
century the branle was danced only "in camera privatamente". Since the
middle of the century in France, for instance, there was no dance more
in vogue than the branle. Both these dances - the gaillarde and the

6 St. Musicologica VII. (1965)

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82 F. Hoerburger: Dance and Dance Music of the 16th Century

branle, and others too like the German Weller, - differed very much
from each other. But one element they certainly had in common - their
popularity.
This fact we find everywhere in the dance and dance music of the
century in question. In France, for example, the court liked the dances
of the provinces: the passepied from Brittany, the gavotte from Dauphine,
and the bourre'e from Auvergne, to mention only a few. In German printed
sources the so-called Deutscher Tanz is prevalent, the dance which,
under the name of Allemande, later achieved an international signifi-
cance. In the second half of the century the sources are full of foreign
folk names. In the German printed collections you may find "Italian",
"Spanish", "Polish", "English", "Hungarian", "Turkish" and other
dances with national names.
But we must understand that not only has folk dance been swa
by court dance, folk music by art music, but that there is also a c
current, which flows from the higher strata back to the basic str
society. In its transition from folklore to court music and back ag
folk music, the material has, on the one hand, gained new valu
on the other hand, it has lost some essential elements of folk t
The national variety of items, blindly collected, became an interna
monotony. If, as I have just mentioned, the dances in the printed
tions received many different names, that is only a cause for dece
because these pieces are hardly distinguishable in their national ch
Moreover, when we examine folk dances noted since that t
as for instance in the baroque suite or among the English country
their structure in music and dance are simple in their four-measu
their strictness of rhythm and lack of melodic ornament. Was it
like this, however, even before the influence of art music an
dance came in? Or was folk dance, in those remote times befo
influence, freer in its movements? When we are examining t
dances of today, less subject to such influences - as is the case
stance in the Balkans where we may observe that there are also folk
and folk dance music freer and less strict in form, both in rhythm
melody - then we may suppose that the folk dances of Wester
in the middle ages were also like this.
Besides these general observations we may see that there a
many special dances, noted in the art music and court dance
sixteenth century, living on in folk tradition, at least in detached p
There is, for instance, the rhythmic type of the qaillarde which a
people of the sixteenth century as well as those of later times.

St. Musicologica VII. (1965)

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 F. Hoerburger: Dance and Dance Music of the 16th Century 83

find this rhythmic form of the gaillarde type in the folk-song sets of Hans
Leo Hasler and Giovanni Gastoldi and even in the Protestant church
songs. And English people sing their National Anthem with the m
type of a gaillarde.
Folk dance names, sometimes grotesquely distorted, or many
ling figures, movements, steps of the old Branle we can find once m
in western folk dances and singing games even today.
It has been my intention to demonstrate the passage of folk
and dance music into the court dance and art music of the sixteenth
century, and back again to the folk tradition. This many sided pheno
non of mutual influence and fertilization has not yet been investi
systematically, either in the history of music, or in the history o
dance. This investigation, when undertaken, will certainly be incompl
because our sources are incomplete. But I am sure that we can find m
examples which can illustrate how closely these two spheres are li
together: on the one hand, the court dance and composed dance m
especially of the sixteenth century; on the other hand, the folk danc
dance music before and after this period.

6* St. Musicologica VII. (1965)

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