Roast and boiled

So, we attempted the version of Danse de Cleves suggested by Robert Mullally in his new book, and remain unconvinced. It is not completely implausible for the musicians to speed up and the dancers to slow down enough to make it work; but seemed to significantly reduce the enjoyment of both of this otherwise lovely dance and tune. I'd be very interested to hear other experiences.

Actually, looking more closely at the argument in Sachs, he (unlike Mullally) does not attempt to reconcile his theory that all basse danse (and Italian bassadanza) should be in 12/8 (effectively moving in 4/4) with the Brussels notation for Danse de Cleves, but instead argues that it (and the other dances with mensural notation in the manuscript) are not, in fact, basse danse at all.

This would potentially undercut what I had planned as my next argument that the 6/4 tempo is the more viable interpretation for the basse danse breve. This is based on the Brussels manuscript dance 'Roti boully joyeulx', which appears (from name and instructions) to be related to 'Rostiboli Gioioso' (attributed to the mid-15th century dance master Domenico, though with steps only recorded in the slightly later 'Ebreo' manuscripts) which in turn shares clear structural similarity with 'Gioioso in Tre' (i.e. 'for three') for which Ebreo claims choreographic credit, and which in one Ebreo manuscript has music (reproduced as example 4 in this article by Barbara Sparti). To close the loop, the relationship of the music for 'Gioioso' and 'Roti boully' is pretty clear.

This dance appeared to be a 15th century European-wide hit, also appearing as 'Rostibin' in a German dance instruction manual, and with variants on the name appearing in multiple sources, including a late 15th century poem in Scots as 'Rusty Bully'.

In all versions it appears to be a 'balli', that is, a dance with mixed tempo. The Italian 'Rostiboli' and 'Gioioso' appear to start in bassadanza (although the tempo is not explicitly given, the step sequence is highly typical) and then change to saltarello followed by piva. The Burgundian 'Roti boully' starts in 'pas de braban' (= saltarello?), has a second section that seems faster (=piva?) and then explicitly says "then follows the basse dance" with the notation changing to (mostly) breves, with a step (e.g. 'd' for double) written above each.

So focussing just on this part of the music, there is an almost perfect match of the breve sequence in 'Roti boully' to each bar of the explicitly written out 6 beat rhythm in 'Gioioso'. In fact reference to 'Gioioso' nicely solves some of the oddities in 'Roti boully', such as missing steps above some of the breves, where faster movement through the preceding notes to match 'Gioioso' (as is notated specifically in the final section of 'Roti boully') would have provided the right number of notes to steps. It seems abundantly clear from these (and other) Italian choreographies that a bassadanza double corresponds to a 6/4 bar.

So, in transcribing this section of 'Roti boully' as 4/4 (as he does) Mullally would have to argue that the rhythm of basse danse has changed in this highly similar, and more or less contemporary, dance, or ignore the relationship to 'Rostiboli' and 'Gioioso' altogether. In fact, the latter is what he does. His extensive note on this dance (pp62-65) mentions a whole set of other literary references (such as the Scottish 'Rusty bully') but says nothing at all about the Italian sources. There is a short and somewhat unclear discussion of the general relations between the Burgundian basse dance and Italian bassa danza and ballo on pages 20-21, but the specific relationship between 'Roti boully' and 'Rostiboli' is not mentioned.

So maybe this is a ridiculously obscure point to get hung up on, but as someone who greatly loves the 'queen of tempi' it matters a lot to know if I've been doing it wrong. And (full disclosure) I'll even admit that I have presented a 4/4 basse danse in the past, on our first CD (I'll let the arranger responsible identify himself, if he wants to admit to it). But I'd be really sorry to see that catch on as a result of this recent publication.