academie: Question

[Greg Lindahl]

People often lump "italian dances" into a category, but the Italians
didn't do that.

In the 15th century they were called by either the name of the tempo
if they stayed in just one (piva, saltarello, quadneria, bassdanza),
or balli if they had multiple tempi. Petit Vriens is called a "ballo
franchesi", a "french dance".

In the 16th century they have names like cascarda, gagliarda, tourdion
(fast galliard), canario, ballo (generic word for dance), balletto (a
little dance), bassa (descendant of 15c bassadance term), pavaniglia.

The English are much more dull. In addition to the foreign words they
used for dances in the 16th century (courante, galliard (also cinque
pass, sink-a-pace), tourdion, brawl), they called some dances Country
Dances (generally without the word English, although Morley does refer
to "our English Country Dances" in his music book in 1600), and
measures, which are often also referred to by more specific names such
as Almain and Pavane.

The French are pretty straight-forward: Arbeau talks about bransles,
galliard/tourdion, pavanes (improvised), almains (improvised), the
gavotte (improvised), couranto, morris, and one lone miss-remembered
bassadance.

I'm being long-winded and pedantic (what a surprise! Gregory _never_
does that!) and this probably isn't what Victoria was looking for for
a newcomer competition, but I think it's important for us to
understand all the different ways dances were named in the actual
Renaissance.

-- Gregory Blount