Feb. 26, 2018, 9:57 p.m. (Message 69479, in reply to message 69475)
Jack McConachie's book is clearly based on careful research. However, historical changes in the musical length of dance figures (as well as uncertainty about what 18th C dance terms actually meant) often led him to adapt Young's MS quite freely. He makes this clear in his Foreword: "In some instances it has been necessary for me to adapt the phrasing of the Dances in this book to take into account the changes in musical outlook since their publication in 1740 ... " He actually makes changes that seem gratuitous, such as describing 15 of the dances as strathspeys, even though the strathspey as separate musical category postdates David Young. McConachie's treatment of "Arthur's Seat" is a good example of this. Here is Young's dance: 16. Arthur’s Seat. RIGHT hands across with the first pair, and cast off; left hands across with the 2d pair, and sett a little. Lead up one pair, & cast off; lead down one pair and cast up. SETT cross partners. Lead out at both sides. The music is in 4/4 tempo and has four 4-bar phrases, each repeated. Young has a clear way of indicating phrasing: red upper-case at the start of bars 1-8 and 17-24, and red lower-case at the start of bars 9-16 and 25-32. (These are the first words of the sentences above.) Except for the delightfully vague "sett a little" the instructions are terse and use standard terms - a bit like our cribs. However, Young's first 8 bars need more than 8 in modern phrasing. So McC expanded them to 16 bars and cut out the last 8 bars completely. He also decided to reconstruct "sett cross partners" as the "set to corners and partner" which was a standard RSCDS formation in 1957. In his other MS, when Young means something like our modern Hello and Goodbye, he writes, "SETT to the cross partner and your own Partner alternatively." The question of what McConachie wanted to happen on bars 31-32 of his dance was exhaustively covered in Strathspey exchanges many years ago. I incline to the "petronella turn" interpretation because of the internal evidence cited by Chris. But I agree with Arthur that we shouldn't impose our own understanding of the H & G movement just because it's standard now. Rosemary Coupe Vancouver