On Jul 11, 2009, at 12:33 PM, [email protected] wrote: > Do we know approximately what the tempo of the Galliard was when > danced?
Not really. We can only guess, based on what we know of the dance. The best way to judge is to try the dance yourself, which, in the case of the galliard, will be great for your cardiovascular system. Then you have to try to account for the difference in clothing and shoes. But there was likely a wide range of tempos reflecting differences in locality or nationality, personal taste, time, thickness of underwear, and age and weight of the dancers. Even if you knew that the 25-year-old Oliver Wilson danced a galliard at dotted half = 60 in the country estate of Lord Chelmsford at 5 pm on March 13, 1595, you might think twice about using that same tempo to recreate the galliard he danced at his own sixtieth birthday celebration in London in August 1530, three weeks before undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his knee. A pet theory of mine (my theory, which is mine, ahem...) is that a dance typically slowed down over time because it came in as the latest dance craze among young people and then slowed down as the generation that embraced it got older. > And what, customarily, is the relationship between that and > the tempo when played as a solo instrumental piece? I imagine that custom is that players decide what tempo they like to play a piece, then come up with a reason the piece would be danced at that tempo. Never mind, I didn't say that. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
