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

Patricia Ruggiero

Jan. 27, 2005, 3:13 a.m. (Message 40423)

Wilson 1815 agrees with Rosemary as to the track; no barring is given.  The
description and illustration can be found on p. 42.  I copied the URL for
this specific page into this post; but, when I tested it, it didn't work.

You can use this link to get the full list of manuals; scroll to the end to
find the Wilson books.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/dihtml/dicatlg.html
(I just tested this and it does work)

As Rosemary said, by the last decade of the 18th c., the figure used 8 bars.
This agrees with the Early American (late 18th c.) collections that I have,
describing the figure as Rosemary indicated, and using 8 bars of music.

Sometime in there folks started doing 4-bar Rights and Lefts which, to my
tastes, is rather inelegant and, quite frankly, pointless.  (gratuitous
editorial comment)  One wonders why they wanted to dance so quickly with
these 4-bar figures.....

Pat

Richard Goss

Jan. 27, 2005, 9:12 a.m. (Message 40425, in reply to message 40423)

Just a thought, but is it possible that their concept of "bar" and
ours is different by a magnitude of 2. I have a lot of dance music
that would look like a strathspey today but if one divides all of the
bars in half the music could become one of our reels, jigs, hornpipes,
depending on the editing.

John Chambers

Jan. 27, 2005, 4:30 p.m. (Message 40430, in reply to message 40425)

| Just a thought, but is it possible that their concept of "bar" and
ours is different by a magnitude of 2. I have a lot of dance music
that would look like a strathspey today but if one divides all of the
bars in half the music could become one of our reels, jigs, hornpipes,
depending on the editing.

Quite possible.  A lot of tunes work in several rhythms and tempos.

Some tune writers, including J.S.  Skinner, have published  tunes  in
more  than  one  rhythm.  For example, his reel Angus Campbell is the
same tune as the Laird of Drumblair, a strathspey.  He also published
the trad tune Wap an' Rowe (aka Reel of Stumpie) as both a reel and a
strathspey. In this case, the barring and tempo are the same, but the
rhythm is different.  (And the "reel" form is more like a polka.) The
other musicians here can probably give a lot more examples.

Brian Charlton

Jan. 28, 2005, 5:49 a.m. (Message 40443, in reply to message 40425)

G'Day,

This certainly seems possible. I have a CD of Julian Bream playing dances by
John Dowland (1563-1626) and the programme notes describe the Galliard as
being "a quick dance to slow music".

This could have carried forward into the next century.

It is certainly possible to dance in reel time to Strathspey music, as
happens when the teacher (woops) plays the wrong track!

Incidentally, a "gigge" (jig) was described in 1676 as "only fit for
Fantastical and Easy-Light-Headed People".

Brian Charlton,
Sydney, Australia

mlamontbrown

Jan. 27, 2005, 11:55 a.m. (Message 40426, in reply to message 40423)

Pat wrote:

> Sometime in there folks started doing 4-bar Rights and Lefts which, to my
> tastes, is rather inelegant and, quite frankly, pointless.  (gratuitous
> editorial comment)  One wonders why they wanted to dance so quickly with
> these 4-bar figures.....

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?

Malcolm

Malcolm L Brown
York

Richard Goss

Jan. 27, 2005, 9:22 p.m. (Message 40432, in reply to message 40426)

Just remembered that this can go both ways. The RSCDS, as opposed to
Playford and the EFDSS version, of "Red House" takes a 16 bar figure,
set 4 bars cast 4, repeat to place, and cuts it into an 8 bar (set,
cast, set, cast back).

Rosemary Coupe

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