Six Italian Dances

Description

SIX ITALIAN DANCES are transcribed from a set of part-books which was known to have been in the possession of an English family before 1580. It is now in the British Museum (Royal Appendix MS 59-62). The MS contains forty-four dance-tunes, besides a number of Italian songs. The dance-music is akin in style to that described in Thoinot Arbeau's Orchesographie (1588), and to the work of Claude Gervaise and Estienne du Tertre, published by Attaignant in the mid-sixteenth century, and reprinted in modern times by M. Henri Expert in one of the volumes of his valuable collection Les maltres musiciens de la renaissance frangaise. Nos. 2, 4 and 6, which appear in the MS with the signature C, i.e., in duple time have been 'rearranged in triple time', according to the principle laid down by Arbeau in the Orchesographie (English translation, page 63). The original MSS are unbarred and without any indications of pace, phrasing or dynamics. These points of interpretation are best left to the taste of individual performer