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Rosemary Coupe

Rosemary Coupe

Re: Arthur's Seat - bars 31-32

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

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