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strathspey@strathspey.org:40433

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Rosemary Coupe

Rosemary Coupe

Cross over two couples. Was: Lead - Right hands or Nearer Hands

Jan. 27, 2005, 9:53 p.m. (Message 40433, in reply to message 40426)

Malcolm wrote,
> Following on from Richard's last comment, do you think that they might
have been
> dancing two steps to the bar, in the same way that we did when Maxwell's
Rant was
> first published?

One can't really think in terms of two steps to the bar, as it's thought
that dancers used walking or running steps then. (It's interesting that
David Young's 1740 MS instructs them to "run" a reel of three.)

However, it's also thought that musical tempos were much slower than they
are now, though apparently they were faster by Wilson's time (Pat will
confirm this). Dance tunes included time signatures like 12/8, 9/8, and
9/4--the variety of the tunes must have made up for the lack of complexity
in the steps! I'd hate to be a musician playing a 12/8 tune at nearly 1 bar
per second, our current reel/jig tempo.

To complicate things further, for a while in the middle of the 18th century,
dances set to 6/8 and 2/4 music used twice the number of bars for a given
figure in comparison to dances set to other tempos. So for the figure we're
discussing, "cross over two couples," 8 bars would be used in those tempos.

Rosemary Coupe

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