To Tame a Pretty Conceit

[ This article appeared in volume 4 of the Letter of Dance. ]

Wherein
things English shall be shown to be things Italian,
and much shall be made manifest

by M. Dougal MacFinlay & M. Sion Andreas o Wynedd (c) 1996

Introduction

There has raged, for nearly as long as the authors have been dancing in the Society, a debate as to the propriety of our doing England's country dances(1) in our balls. As the debaters have traditionally drawn their lines, one side cites the lack of extant choreographies prior to 1648 and takes the position that we can not prove and ought not to presume. The other side cites nonchoreographic textual and iconographic evidence which might be taken to indicate that these dances were known and done well back into the reign of Elizabeth I and takes the position that we might as well.

What has never been attempted, to our knowledge, is a direct comparison of choreographies, the later with earlier models, in an attempt to determine if, stylistically, there was enough evidence to reappraise one's stance on the subject. It is easy to understand why this has never been done. There are no country dance choreographies from any earlier than British Museum Lansdowne No. 1115, a manuscript dated by Cunningham to 1648(2), and that bastion of the country dance choreographies, the English Dancing Master, did not see light until 1651. When there are no country dances of any certain earlier date against which to compare the dances from the English Dancing Master, one cannot fault people for not doing so. What was needed, then, was some sort of connection to a dance form which could be shown to have been danced prior to the Society's cut-off date.

Oddly, the very vehicle which could demonstrate a connection has been before the community for years. The idea that England's country dances, or some of them in any case, took as their model the court dances of contemporary Italy is mentioned so matter-of-factly that one might suppose that it were a proven fact, and this is found in several sources which deal with country dances.

We are aware of cultural commerce between Italy and England. Elizabeth I owned a copy of Caroso's Il Ballarino, and she took pride in the fact that in her youth she had been taught to dance high in the Italian manner. Certainly an Italianate dance in England is not outside the realm of possibility. Prior to our addressing this question, however, we are aware of only a few observations, tentatively advanced, that there might be similarities between "Bizzaria d'Amore" and "The Parson's Farewell" and between the "Contrapasso" and certain English round dances.

The connection does exist and can be firmly demonstrated, and we hope to show that an entire class of country dances was based, directly, on a model popular in Italy in the last quarter of the sixteenth century.

The Italian Model

There are thirty-two cascarde recorded in the two dance books of Fabritio Caroso, Il Ballarino in 1581 and Nobiltà di Dame in 1600. They are all, but for one example (3), the work of Caroso, practically signature dances of this master.

The cascarde were dances to be done by two, or in rare cases three, dancers. They were light and flirtatious, and were done to quick triple time melodies. They were discrete dances, akin to the "sciolte in saltarello" found in dance-suite type balletti, but done wholly in the one metre(4).

All cascarde were constructed according to a specific formula. They were from three to seven movements in length, most being four and five movements long. Each movement may be divided neatly into three separate sections. An Intrada opens each movement and carries a certain thematic content. A Mostra follows, and in this the dancers pose and display themselves to each other. Finally comes a Ritornello in which the dancers either advance towards or fall away from each other, returning to place(5).

There is likewise a formulaic progression of the basic figure of the Intrade throughout a cascarda. There are three essential forms to this Intrada. The first is a Circling figure, in which the dancers either exchange places of go full about a wheel on the floor. The second is a Challenging figure in which, in the case of solos, one dancer advances on his partner, does a short cadenza passage, and then falls back to place. The last form is a Finale, which involves the dancers going to one side or in one direction and then returning to place with the same steps. These forms have different ways in which they are realized, and the realizations progress in nearly as predictable a manner as do the forms themselves.

In order to make longer dances, Caroso expanded the basic three-movement cascarda by doubling and splitting forms. The Intrade of the first two movements of the five-, six- and seven-movement cascarde are derived in this way.

By simply doubling every passage in the three-movement cascarda, the six-movement cascarda was easily obtained, but this, even in the less perfect dances of Il Ballarino, was deemed too simple a device upon which to rely. The Challenging figure, most often was not simply doubled; rather it was split into two repeats of the same passage. The first of these split passages was done by the man and the second by the woman. The conversational aspect of passages is most notable in dances like "Il Canario" where, in the pedalogue, each passage of the man is answered by the woman. These split and doubled passages could be modified as suited the choreographer's fancy. To the extremely long seven-movement cascarda, "Leggiadra Ninfa," for example, was derived by doubling a passage which had already doubled, giving four Challenging figures which are doubled and split into two distinct repetitions of the solo passages(6).

In the five-movement cascarda, the most common type, the progression is as follows(7):

Five-movement cascarda

In the four-movement cascarda, the progression is:

Four-movement cascarda

The examples of the six- and seven-movement cascarde still follow the formula, doubling and splitting passages which already exist.

Six-movement cascarda:

and

Seven-movement cascarda

There are two other cascarde which need to be mentioned. The first is a variant of the four-movement cascarda, "Alta Sergarda," the Intrade of which progress:

Four-movement cascarda (Alta Sergarda):

This progression is the only example of its kind, lying off to one side of the branch connecting the usual four-movement cascarde and the sole example of a three-movement cascarda, "La Castellana." "La Castellana" has the following progression of Intrade:

Three-movement cascarda (La Castellana):

In the cascarda, to be sure, there are variations in the way in which the Mostra as well as the Ritornello are realized, but so far as can be determined, there is no reliably formulaic progression. For example, one cannot tell which sort of Ritornello will follow the Man's solo of a five-movement cascarda.

The Intrade figures in the cascarde possess a thematic progression. The dance begins with an introduction in which the dancers identify both each other and the area in which they are to dance(10). Next the dancers engage and dance for one another. Finally the dancers resolve the drama of their implied courtship.

There is one last point which will prove to be of utmost importance when dealing with the connections between the cascarda and England's country dances. This is relaed to the fact that most popular music from the time was not, by and large, given to tripartite division. Popular songs, many of which were the basis for cascarde as well as country dances, are much more likely to be given to bipartite division, owning a Verse and a Chorus.

In order to fit cascarde to these popular melodies, therefore, the Mostra was routinely "swallowed," which is to say that that section of the choreography disappeared and the music which it occupied was allotted to either an expanded Ritornello or expanded Intrada. In the cascarda, the Mostra always managed to appear at least one time in every dance.

The English Derived Form

There are 104 country dances in the English Dancing Master. Among these there are certain choreographic patterns which may be ascertained. One pattern, however, dominates all others.

In this most common pattern, the dance is three movements in length, and the first section of each movement of these dances follows a certain progression of form. The first section of the first movement in this progression involves doing a double forward and back, or, in circle dances, doing slips or doubles to the left and then to the right. That same section of the second movement involves siding, most usually by the man with his partner, although that does vary on occasion. That section of the final movement involves arming, again usually by the man with his partner. These figures are referred to as the Doubling figure, Siding figure and Arming figure, respectively.

We have distinguish these dances from others in the English Dancing Master by giving them the name Set form country dances. There are 56 examples of this in the English Dancing Master, and a further eleven examples which have modified the pattern slightly(11). These account for more than half the dances in the collection.

Among these 67 dances, there are six which were set to music with tripartite melodies. This section will concentrate on an analysis of these six dances.

Rufty Tufty, for foure(12) (1651)

"Rufty Tufty" was only included in the 1651 edition, and it is a piece of pure good luck that it was. Had it not been, the purest and most vital clue linking England's country dances with the court dances of Italy would have been lost. As can be seen in the choreography, "Rufty Tufty" is a quintessential Set form country dance. What may not be immediately apparent is that is it also, in form and intent, a cascarda.

The clue which led to the association of the two was the tripartite division of the movements. Further, each movement of "Rufty Tufty" is headed by an introductory figure which progresses through the dance just as an Intrada does. The second section of each movement is one of the country dance's equivalents of a Mostra, the set and turn single, and the third section, with its leading away and coming back together, is just as much a teasing chorus as the Ritornello of any cascarda.

For the purposes of the rest of this examination, we will identify the Set form country dances' Intrada section as the Verse, their Mostra as the Bridge, and their Ritornello as the Chorus.

In the case of "Rufty Tufty," and of Set form country dances in general, it is important to consider that where the couple moves as a single unit, it may be considered to be a single entity. In the first movement, therefore, where a cascarda would have the dancers circling around each other, "Rufty Tufty" has the couples double forward and back. Certainly doubling and circling are not the same steps, nor this Verse and the Circling figure the same. They are, however, both the same in intent. The Circling figure of the cascarda and the Doubling figure of "Rufty Tufty" identify the other dancers and define the area in which the dance is to take place(14).

The Challenging figure from the cascarda is at heart the same as the Siding figure in the Set form country dance. Even if the intent were not the same in each figure, the fact that they both use essentially the same floor patterns hints at a relationship.

The Finale of the cascarda involves a sequence of steps which lead the dancer off to the left and then return him to place with the same steps done to the right. Often this figure is in the form of a Grand circle. In the Set form country dance this figure has been transformed into another circling figure, in which the arms are held, hence the Arming figure. As before, the intent is the same in both dances.

If "Rufty Tufty" were the sole example of the cascarda's connection to the Set form country dance, there would have been much less of a paper to write here. As it is, however, there are more country dances which show the stamp of the cascarda in their creation.

Gathering Peascods, Round for as many as will (1651-1690)

"Gathering Peascods" has the same tripartite form as both "Rufty Tufty" and the cascarde, but it has modified the forms slightly to accommodate the round figure of the dance.

The Verses exhibit the standard Doubling, Siding, Arming figure progression which is common to Set form country dances. In order to define the dance area in this round dance, the Doubling figure is done sideways. The Siding and Arming figures then revert to an emphasis on the partner as was noted in "Rufty Tufty."

The Bridge takes on a much more rustic flair than the Mostra ever does. In it, one sex and then the other goes fully around a smaller circle in the middle of the dance.

The Chorus makes use of the center of the round form as a focus for that section of the dance. It also takes advantage of the practice of advancing and falling, or turning, back to place which occasionally appears in the Ritornello of the cascarda.

Graies Inne Maske, Longwayes for eight (1651-1698)

[Music changes]

"Graies Inne Maske" is a Modified Set form country dance, and the longways form of the dance has made certain changes to the form desirable to the choreographer just as the round form did in "Gathering Peascods."

The usual progression of Verses is used, and the Bridge is very similar to a form of Mostra found in the cascarda's closest cousin dance in the Italian reperoire, the spagnoletta, although the steps are done along the side of the longways set and not around a circle.

The Chorus mixes the usual retreating aspect of the Ritornello with an interesting twist, the changing of places instead of simply coming back to place.

The second half of the dance is rather similar to long drawn out honouring sequences which are found in other country dances such as "The Slip."

Row Well, Ye Mariners, Longwayes for as many as will (In all editions)

"Row Well, Ye Mariners" is again a Modified Set form country dance, albeit much more modified than "Graies Inne Maske."

The first movement is intact, although the clapping sequence which is added onto the end is pure invention on the choreographer's part. The Arming figure has been lost entirely, however, and the Siding figure has been transformed into some large haye about the set.

The Bridge uses a very frolicsome slipping step instead of the more sedate steps and figures which have been used in the other dances, but the pull back and meet again is pure Ritornello.

Maiden Lane, Longwayes for six (1651-1698)

"Maiden Lane" is a Modified Set form country dance, but in it and the "Staines Morris" one can see the cascarda form being interpreted differently.

The Verses follow the usual progression for the Set form country dance, and the Chorus makes use of an interesting device to vary the form.

In the Ritornello of the cascarda, steps done falling away are very often qualified with the instruction that they are to be done "fiacheggiando," flankingly. This is to say that the steps are done not so much backwards as backwards and to the side. The first step would lead out with the left foot, and therefore the left shoulder, and the second step, leading with the right foot and shoulder would usually even the dancer out. If the Ritornello retreated, the dancer was then usually called on the simply come forwards to place using whatever steps Caroso indicated; if, however, the Ritornello advanced, the dancer was often called on to come back to place using steps which are described as "volti," turning. The use in the Chorus, therefore, of the Set and Turn Single would appear to be another interpretation of the Ritornello.

The Bridge has great variation from movement to movement, and is no longer as pure and predictable, but the intent is still discernible within the figure.

Staines Morris, Longwayes for as many as will (1651-1665)

Do thus till you have fetcht up all the We.

The "Staines Morris," aside from being the last of the Set form country dances which we will examine, and a Modified Set form country dance at that, shares with "Maiden Lane" the use of the Set and Turn Single in the Chorus.

There are extra movements added on after each of the form progression movements, save for one feature, the Arming figure has been dropped entirely. In its place, as many Siding figures as necessary are used to bring each lady from the bottom of the set to the top. In this way, is has rather the same feel as the honouring sequence in "Graies Inne Maske" or "The Slip."

In Conclusion

Our conclusion is bound to be controversial, but at last we come to it. The Set form country dances which we have examined here are, in form and intent, cascarde, or at least they were so strongly influenced by them that the form and intent of these dances are, section by section, movement by movement, progression by progression, virtually identical.

Although the Set form country dances with tripartite divisions may be associated with the cascarda, what of the majority of Set form country dances? The bipartite division found in 61 of the 67 Set form country dances is not found in the cascarda, or is it?

Earlier we drew attention to a practice in the cascarda of "swallowing" the Mostra into either the Intrada or the Ritornello in order to make the dance fit a piece of popular music which was bipartite in internal structure. In the cascarde in which this happens, the swallowed Mostra would make a minimum of one appearance per dance, but it would require only a minor conceptual leap, having done away with the Mostra throughout most of the dance, to go ahead and simply excise the Mostra from dances in which the music would not support it.

To be sure this would remove these dances one step further from the pure cascarda-influenced country dances. It would, however, still keep them within a reasonable distance of the Italian original, they having used the cascarda's own rules to generate this variation on the form.

We do not, can not, find the argument plausible that in the middle of the Seventeenth century English dancing masters would look back to a dance form from another country from the end of the previous century in order to find inspiration for a new dance form, and the remarkable similarities beween these two dance forms, down to the country dance's use of the rules for varying the cascarde, make it unlikely that the Set form country dance was arrived at in isolation.

We apply Occam's Razor and find it more plausible that late in the reign of Elizabeth I, English dancing masters took the Italian cascarda and grafted it into an existing English dance tradition, simplifying and regularizing the steps and figures as they went along in order to make the dances plain English. This would explain the similarities between the two forms and would make more sense knowing what we do of the social context of that time and place.

As is the case in many areas of dance history, there is no hard proof for this. In dance history, there seldom is. In fact we would be remiss if we did not point out there there is nothing at all in the literature of the time that suggests that cascarde were being done at the English court. The quote about Elizabeth's dancing "high in the Italian manner" could simple refer to style of executing steps, not to form(15).

Until choreographic notation of a country dance dating to earlier than 1648 surfaces, however, we can only offer the outcome of this comparison between the structure and thematic form of two different dance forms, and leave the reader to decide for himself if the argument presented is convincing.

We say, "Bring on the country dances!"

MrDMcF, MrSAoW

Bibliography

Caroso, Fabritio. Il Ballarino. Venice: Ziletti,1581 ; facsimile reprint ed., New York: Broude Brothers, 1967.

Caroso, Fabritio. Nobiltà di Dame. Venice: Il Muschio, 1600 ; facsmilie reprint ed., Bologna: Forni, 1967.

________. Nobiltà di Dame. Translated by Julia Sutton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Cunningham, James Patrick. Dancing in the Inns of Court. London: Jordan, 1965.

Engle, Ian Andrew. "Dell'Arte Cascardare." The Letter of Dance v4.

Keller, Kate Van Winkle and Genevieve Shimer. The Playford Ball. Pennington, N.J.: A Capella Books, 1990.

Millar, John Fitzhugh. Elizabethan Country Dances. Williamsburg, Va: Thirteen Colonies Press, 1985.

Playford, John, ed. The English Dancing Master. London: Thomas Harper, 1651; facsmilie reprint ed., London: Schott, 1957.

Walker, Nancy J. "The History and Evolution of the English Country Dance as seen through Selected Editions of The Dancing Master." M.A. Thesis, Ohio State University, 1979.

We would also like to thank the following people, who proofread and commented upon the drafts of this article:

• Mistress Urraca Yriarte de Gamboa / Mary Peralta Railing
• Mistress Rosina del Bosco Chiaro / Vivian Stephens
• Lord Dani of the Seven Wells / Dani Zweig
• Lord Phelan ab Emrys / Jeremy Kessler

Notes

1. We refer to country dances instead of English Country Dance or ECD, and to the English Dancing Master instead of Playford. These laxities in terminology have crept into the Society's common parlance over the years, first as short-hand, but later as accepted and authoritative terms. The first predisposes the reader to assume that there is a monolithic entity, English Country Dance, when in all probability there are simply several related dance forms built on the common base of an English national dance form. The second predisposes the reader to the notion that Playford did more than collect and print the English Dancing Master.

2. Cunningham, James Patrick, Dancing in the Inns of Court (London: Jordan, 1965), p. 17.

3. Allegrezza d'Amore, in Il Ballarino, which he attributs to Oratio Matire.

4. Caroso, Fabritio, Nobiltà di Dame, trans. by Julia Sutton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 44.

5. This tripartite division is most clearly visible in the cascarda Gracca Amorosa.

6. It is important to note that Caroso's preference was to double the Finale as seldom as possible, doing so only once in those two-person cascarde of his recorded in Il Ballarino.

7. The examples for this paper are drawn from the two-person cascarde in Il Ballarino exclusively. The three-person cascarde are very prone to irregularities in the formula, although that formula is still ascertainable within the dances. The cascarde in Nobiltà di Dame were already regularized by Caroso in the act of making perfect what was imperfect. The two-person cascarde of Il Ballarino, therefore, represent descriptive, as opposed to presrciptive, choreographies.

8. There are several forms through which an Intrada may be realized, the number next to that realization indicates the number of dances in which that realization occurs.

9. In this case, the term Siding was simply the best descriptive term for these figures. In some dances they are similar to Feuillet's version of siding, advancing to end either facing or side by side, but in some others they are more similar to Cecil Sharp's first reconstruction of country dance siding.

10. Caroso describes the Circling figures as being done in ruota, in a wheel, and the dancers do these dances, by and large, within the wheel defined in the first movement.

11. The most common variation is to insert another movement after each movement which carries the Set form progression. It is almost possible to view these as nothing more than especially long movements, but as they are separated in the text we have simply swept them into a class of Modified Set form country dances. Other modified forms include chopping off either the Doubling movement or the Arming movement (although oddly, never the Siding movement,) or by doubling the Siding movement.

12. We wished to give the choreography as it appeared in the English Dancing Master. This was not possible in this text due to page formatting. Instead, we have fallen to the form used in Kate Van Winkle-Keller's Playford Ball.

13. The English Dancing Master specifies only one Set and Turn simple. The Cecil Sharp reconstruction, which is the most commonly taught today, has doubled this section.

14. It is also interesting to watch the logic of this in action and then to see it reinforced. Once the dancers have been identified and the dance area defined, the dancers then go on to do the rest of the dance concentrating on their partners as do the dancers in the cascarda.

15. There is, however, evidence that the cascarda's tripartite melodic form was known from Italy to Scotland, as may be seen in dance tunes such as the `Ballo del Gran Duca' and `On the Bankis of Helicon.' The concept of cascarda-like progression of figures throughout a movement, from Intrada through Mostra to Ritornello, may be found in dances such as the Bransle des Lavadriers. The concept of overall form, and of consistent progression of the form of the Intrada from on movement to the next is evident in the cascarda's sister dances, the spagnolette, as well as Cesare Negri's version of the same, Lo Spagnoletto, and his Bizzaria d'Amore.

Musical tempo might change from Caroso's triple time to a duple metre, but the form and intent was constant and unmistakable.