Medieval Instrumental Dancesby Timothy J. McGee

Medieval Instrumental Dances by Timothy J. McGeeReview by: Keith PolkJournal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Summer, 1991), pp. 324-328Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/831607 .

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SREVIEWS -

Timothy J. McGee. Medieval Instrumental Dances. Bloomington, Indi- ana: Indiana University Press, 1989. xiv, 177 pp.

DANCING WAS THE SUPREME ENTERTAINMENT of refined society in the late middle ages, both for the cultured urban bourgeosie and for aristocrats. Literary documents that mention or describe medieval dance abound, and numerous contemporary illustrations depict dancers. A modest but repre- sentative corpus of music is available, and even dance houses and ballrooms survive, some with their musicians' galleries intact. Yet for all the peripheral detail we have been able to assemble, our knowledge is exasperatingly blank of the core of the art, of the specifics of what took place on the floors of the medieval ballroom. Medieval dancing was an ephemeral entertainment that vanished with the passing of its age. This enigmatic subject has engaged Timothy McGee for some twenty years, and Medieval Instrumental Dances offers us a summary of his current views, especially focused on the instrumental music that would have accompanied the dance.

The book is divided into two main sections. The first covers the historical and theoretical background of medieval instrumental dances, especially from about 1250 to 1430. This background section is quite concise, a scant forty-five pages including notes. The following section comprises an edition of all known medieval instrumental dance music (to ca. 143o; note that vocal dance music is thus not included), and forms the heart of this effort. This section consists of about one hundred twenty pages, including commentary and notes. No general bibliography is given, but ample reference to collateral readings is furnished in the notes; McGee does provide a bibliography of facsimiles and transcriptions. The volume is published with heavy paper covers, with a spiral binding-a very convenient format for musicians since the music then lies flat for performance. The text is modestly but pleasantly illustrated, and the music is presented in clear and easily read type.

The historical section is brief but well defined and tightly written. It is divided into four sections. The first reviews the various kinds of sources available: iconographic, archival, literary, and theoretical (this last receives the most ample discussion, with Grocheo the focus). McGee provides only brief discussion of the distinction between vocal and instrumental forms, but does emphasize the tight relationship between sung and played dances. This must be borne in mind, even for the estampies, for example, which appear in manuscripts in textless and apparently "instrumental" guise. For it is possible, of course, that these were textless because they were deliberately "generic" in nature; that is, these estampies might have been written down as melodies to which new texts could be freely adapted for new sung dances.



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The title of the second segment of the historical section, "The Repertory of Textless Dances," itself underlines the close relationship between vocal and instrumental aspects of this music. McGee provides analyses of the extant estampies, and suggests that the Italian ones, both formally and melodically more elaborate, stand in closer relationship to Eastern practices than those of the French. The emphasis on Eastern influence is one of the stimulating themes that runs throughout the volume. McGee covers a variety of other monophonic dances, including the ductia, the mysterious nota, the saltarello, several paired dances, several German dances, and, finally, several polyphonic pieces drawn mainly from the Robertsbridge and Faenza codices. This segment closes with a table summarizing national origin.

The third part of the historical sections, "Dancing," is very short and is devoted to a discussion of what is known about dance steps and move- ments-which in terms of hard facts is very little. With the final section McGee returns to firmer ground and provides a stimulating discussion of ideas on performance practice. He discusses the instruments appropriate for dancing, observing quite correctly that the premier instrument to accompany dancing until about 1400 was the fiddle. He makes pragmatic observations concerning tempos. He discusses ornamentation and improvisation, under- lining the idea that much performance during this period was monophonic, and again places emphasis on Eastern influences, especially concerning elaboration and embellishment of melody. McGee urges his readers to experiment with ornamentation and improvisational techniques, and even though his ideas are speculative, this represents one of the most provocative features of the book.

The primary goal of this work, to present an edition of the music, demanded understandable but unfortunate compression throughout the historical discussion. More of McGee's ideas of the sweep of dance history would have been helpful. Dancing surged in popularity in the late fourteenth century, both in noble and in urban circles. We have quite concrete manifestations of this boom. The citizens of the relatively small town of Nordlingen built a new dance house in 1444. The building still stands (now known as the Brothaus) and is of astonishing size. The "old dance house," which also survived into modern times, was itself a building of formidable bulk.' Jewish dance traditions, including halls for dancing and "dance masters," may have played a stimulating role, and we do know that one of the first masters to write an instruction manual was Guglielmo Ebreo, a Jew. The instruments used to accompany dancing shifted in the early fifteenth century, from fiddle to either the loud shawms or the soft ensembles centered on the lute. Indeed, the need to provide music for refined dancing may have contributed a vital stimulus to the development of artful instrumental polyphony. Dancing itself became immensely complicated with the very

' For illustrations of both the old and the new dance houses in N6rdlingen see Dietmar-H. Voges, Die Reicbsstadt Nordlingen (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1988), 53, I85 and I8o. The "new" structure is also illustrated in Walter Salmen, Tanz im 17. und 8S. Jahrhundert, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, vol. 4: Musik der Neuzeit/Lieferung 4 (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag for Musik, 1988), 144-45. Salmen also discusses other dance houses and medieval ballrooms; particularly important are those of Cologne, Leipzig, and Nuremberg.



326 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

long and demanding choreographies of the basse dance. To be sure, many of these developments became clear only after 143o, the terminal date McGee has chosen. Still, much change was set in motion during the century preceding, and a more ample evaluation of the historical context by someone with McGee's command of the sources would be most welcome.

The major portion of the book is devoted to McGee's edition of the surviving music. The first part consists essentially of two groups of estampies, French and Italian. This is followed by a group of varied dances (saltarellos and so forth), including a new item in the repertory, a Danga amorosa that McGee discovered recently in the archives of Florence. The final group consists of a series of polyphonic settings drawn mainly from the Robertsbridge and Faenza Codices. The Faenza pieces were selected by McGee because they seemed to him to have the character of dance pieces (only Belfiore danga is indicated as a dance by its title). He did not include Biance flour, which is based on the dance tune Collinetto (this concordance, which has not been picked up by dance specialists, is particularly interesting in that it connects Faenza with the later dance repertory, and with other such sources as the Buxheim Organ Book; for these other concordances see Frederick Crane, Materials for the Study of the Fifteenth Century Basse Danse [Brooklyn: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1968], o104).

The commentaries to the pieces are extensive and informative, listing the "counting unit" (that is, the note value to be assigned the normal beat of 60-80 beats per minute), followed by a list of the sources with their brief description. McGee gives ample references to appropriate literature, including a list of facsimiles and transcriptions.

McGee explains clearly when he has made emendations in the text and the reason therefor. He has corrected a few long standing errors. For example, the first phrase of the third Saltarello from London, British Library, Additional 29987 (no. 24 in this edition) is now allowed to stand as one of seven measures, instead of being altered and forced into the eight-measure mold demanded by Johannes Wolf. The suggestions for added accidentals are very conservative, which seems quite justified for the monophonic repertory, perhaps less so with the contrapuntal pieces. In Bel fiore danga, for example, a very clear outline of the tritone is allowed to stand in the tenor (mm. 22-23), and McGee did not suggest altering the leading tones preceding the final cadence (to call for C# leading to D in the superius). Performers, of course, can easily adjust such passages to their own taste. The music is cleanly and accurately printed, although the accidentals are sometimes a bit crowded. One typographical error should be corrected. On page I 18, the last dotted quarter note at the end of the first line should not be dotted (a 7/8 measure results as it stands). This same correction should be made in every other first ending in this piece.

McGee's decision to conclude his volume with the dance pieces from Faenza, which he dates at ca. 1435-40, is reasonable. It may be observed, though, that a very similar repertory of German and perhaps Flemish and Dutch pieces, from about the same time or only slightly later, is excluded. That is, McGee assumes that such pieces as Bel fiore danga (including Biance ftour, one presumes) with two-part texture, a slow moving dance-like tune in the tenor, and an elaborated cantus, represent dances. A group of northern



REVIEWS 327

pieces, usually thought of as for keyboard, survives; these pieces are quite similar in style and spirit to those in Faenza. Again, we know that dancing was an enormously popular entertainment in Flanders, Holland, and Ger- many, but we know almost nothing of the pieces to which the Northerners danced. If the situation were similar to that in Italy and France, some vernacular tunes would have been used. In German areas, such pieces as Mit ganczem willen and Der winter der will weychen, which appear in instrumental versions contemporary with Faenza, could well have been used for dancing. More cogently, a few settings of actual dance tunes do appear in German sources very close to Faenza in both date and style. Settings of the French / Burgundian basse-danse melodies Je languis and Une fois avant que morir surface in the Lochamer Fundamentum volume, which contains repertory from ca. 1440 to 1450 (see Crane, pp. 78-79, 102). More dramatic is the group of contemporary pieces recently discovered in fragmentary folios in the Bavarian State Library described by Martin Staehelin.' These include, besides several German tunes that could have been appropriate for use in the ballroom, settings of Une fois avant que mourir and Venise/La franchoise. The latter is in the fragment Clm 19775/7, fol. 2v (Staehelin, "Miinchner Fragmente," 183, and illustration no. 14). Only one line of the dance melody survives, which Staehelin labeled "an unidentified German song." With so little of the melody preserved Staehelin may have been reluctant to name the piece, but this initial phrase is so singular that there seems to me no doubt that this is the widely circulated tune. These settings are particularly important as they underline the fact that German soft minstrels were evidently incorporating "international" dance tunes into their polyphonic performances by 1450 at the latest, and perhaps as early as 1430. German instrumental music appears to have changed dramatically about 1450, with Conrad Paumann playing a leading role in establishing an instrumental style that is to modern ears much smoother and harmonically sophisticated than that of ca. 1430o. Still, the picture of German and Flemish instrumental music in the early and mid-fifteenth century is quite muddled. While it is now clear that a rich patronage environment called forth generations of superb instrumental musicians, the details of their accomplishments remain hazy. In short, because of the uncertainties of the northern repertory, from a practical point of view McGee's decision to close the musical section with the Faenza pieces is sensible, but had I written the commentary I would have been inclined at least to point out the thrust of contemporary developments north of the Alps.

A final observation: one of the most stimulating aspects of the introductory section lies in the suggestions for musicians today to expand creatively on the medieval dance repertory by applying various techniques of embellishment and improvisation. It would have been most helpful for someone of McGee's experience to have provided a few pages of examples.

2 Staehelin, "Miinchner Fragmente mit mehrstimmiger Musik des spiten Mittelalters," Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in G6ttingen. I. Philologisch-historische Klasse 6 (1988): 179-86.



32 8 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

This book represents an outstanding contribution. The historical section is concise, but offers ample background. The music section finally makes the medieval dance repertory conveniently available in one volume that provides reliable texts in a format accessible to scholars and performing musicians alike. Every historian, performer, and dancer interested in dance history should purchase it (the price is very reasonable, another virtue), and all music and dance libraries should add this one to their collections.

KEITH POLK

University of New Hampshire

Osvaldo Gambassi. II Concerto Palatino della Signoria di Bologna: cinque secoli di vita musicali a corte (125o-1797). Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1989. viii, 734 PP.

GAMBASSI'S INTENT IS TO SURVEY THE CIVIC PATRONAGE of Bologna from its beginnings in the thirteenth century until the suppression of the city's municipal ensembles (by then called II Concerto Palatino) in 1797. He begins his effort in Part I with a short background discussion. Part 2, some 500 pages of archival extracts, forms the central element of this monograph. Part 3 consists of slightly more than a hundred pages of chronological lists of musicians employed by the city from I250 to 1797. Part 4, the final section, is an index of the musicians who are named in Part 2. Gambassi does not provide a topical index, nor does he give a bibliography.

The core of Gambassi's effort lies in the publication of archival documents in Part 2. These are given in chronological order, spanning I250 to 1796. After about 16oo most of the extracts selected by Gambassi are in Italian; before that the majority are in Latin (no translations for the latter are provided). The documents yield fascinating glimpses of the origin and development of musical ceremony in Bologna. For about the first century of patronage the players were exclusively trumpeters, and indeed a majority of the documentation in Part 2 relates to trumpets. The early documents reveal the clear ceremonial and ritualistic nature of these performers. Not so clear from the texts Gambassi has chosen is the shift to more musical activities of these players, a shift that was an accomplished fact by about

I650o. Concerning more strictly musical developments, Gambassi has uncovered

a document that reveals that Bologna had engaged a shawm band (called pifari there) in 1399, and the sources show an influx of German wind players around I450 as well as the hiring of a trombonist in 1469. A document from 1475 reveals not only that the Mantuan shawmist Bernardino Piffaro was still in the city, but also that he was a specialist in the soprano register. Gambassi had evidently not located two further sources on Bernardino, which are letters from the City Council of Bologna to Ludovico Gonzaga, relating wishes that Bernardino should remain in Bolognese service (see Susan Forscher Weiss, "Bologna Q 18: Some Reflections on Content and Context,"



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Medieval Instrumental Dancesby Timothy J. McGee