# Playford's English Dancing Master >>
# Thoinot Arbeau
# Old Measures
# 15th century Italian saltarello and quadernaria
# 15th century Italian dance (old)
# Tant que vivray (midi)
# Notes on Guido of Arrezo's "Micrologus" >>
# Notes on Sylvestro Ganassi's "Fontegara" >>
Medieval Songbook >>
Contains music from the Cantigas de Santa Maria and by trouvère Adam de la Halle.
Playford's English Dancing Master >>
Thoinot Arbeau
Tordion and Galliard
Arbeau says:
The tune of a tordion and that of a galliard are the same, and there is no difference between them, save that the tordion is danced close to the ground to a light, lively beat, and the galliard is danced higher off the ground to a slower, stronger beat.
I have here used the same tempo to better illustrate two different possible beat patterns for the tune Arbeau gives:
Old Measures
These are my very simple arrangements of the Old Measures. They are mostly just a few different instruments playing in unison, with some of the instruments playing simplified versions of the melody.
There is no surviving music for Madam Sosilia's alman, so I used a modern composition by Joseph Casazza. A composition, I might add, which although quite lovely caused me no end of confusion until I realized the emphasis pattern in part A is different to that in parts B and C.
Source code, included mostly for my own documentation. If you look at it you may go blind, or at least wish you had. I used ChucK, which does physical modelling, for the sound synthesis.
15th century Italian saltarello and quadernaria
Material for a class on the saltarello and quadernaria for St. Vitus Dance Weekend 2009.
Ferretra (modern composition to fit dance description) - Sheet music (PDF) - part 2 only - slower version - slower version of part 2 only
Voltati in Ca Rosina - slower version
However, see this blog entry on the topic.
15th century Italian dance (old)
These are the result of a (not entirely successful) attempt to algorithmically produce 4 part harmonizations of some 15th century Italian dance music.
Amoroso - MIDI - PDF (some notational problems...) - source
Colonnese - MIDI - Colonnese MP3 that rocks (see also below) - PDF - source
Verçeppe - MIDI - PDF - source
String quartet version - MIDI (not period, but sounds good!)
Voltati in Ca Rosina - MIDI - PDF - source
Note: source tarballs are not very polished, and are mostly for my own reference.
Daniel Matthews sent me this more realistic synthesis of Collonnese on electric guitar.
Tant que vivray (midi)
tant.pdf (no words)
(now with correct bass line)
Notes on Guido of Arrezo's "Micrologus" >>
(An 11th century music theory text.)
Notes on Sylvestro Ganassi's "Fontegara" >>
(A 16th century recorder technique manual.)