This week, we presented a show inspired by country dances and folk dancing. Grab your partner for the quadrille and browse our playlist below.
Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884) Ma Vlast: Farmer's Wedding In his early years, Czech composer Bedřich Smetana lived a privileged life. His father was a master brewer in Bohemia for Count Waldstein (the same royal patron who was the namesake of Beethoven’s Waldstein piano sonata). As a result, the elder Smetana worked at the brewery of the Litomyšl (LIT-oh-MISH-ull) Castle, a gorgeous Renaissance castle located in the modern-day Czech Republic. It was in that brewery on the castle grounds that the young Smetana was born. Smetana’s father encouraged him to become a musician, and years later, he would move to Prague and establish a unique Czech musical style. In 1874, Smetana composed his ode to his homeland, a set of symphonic poems called Má Vlast (or “My Homeland”), containing this memorable movement dedicated to the Vltava (or “Moldau”) River that flows through Prague. In the music, we flow past vast Bohemian forests, and in our excerpt, to a farmers wedding. The music then takes a fantastical turn as we experience a mermaids round dance.
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) Two Nordic Melodies, Cattle Call and Peasant Dance Op. 63 Grieg’s interest in Norwegian folk music is pervasive throughout his compositions, even from his early absolute music such as his piano sonatas and symphony, to more direct connections in his lyric pieces and Peer Gynt suites. His Two Nordic Melodies begins with original music composed with Scandinavian folk music characteristics, simply titled “In a Folk Style.” The second movement is much more descriptive. Cattle Call and Peasant Dance are arrangements of true Norwegian folksongs and were first used by Grieg in his 25 Folk Songs and Dances for piano. Grieg passed his ability to maintain a sense of rustic origin while creating art music to his students Frank Delius and Percy Grainger. Both would also make folk music, from England, Australia and America, the foundation of their compositions.
Ferdinand Hérold (1791-1833) La Fille mal gardée, Act 2: Widow Simone - Clog Dance First presented in 1786, La Fille Mal Gardée, or The Wayward Daughter, is considered to be the oldest ballet in the repertoire. The music for the first productions were always pastiches of popular airs and well-known classical music themes of the time. However in 1828, a version of the ballet premiered at the Paris Opera with an entirely new score by Ferdinand Hérold. Hérold had become famous as a composer and tastemaker for opera comique in the early 19th century. His score retains the light spirit of the original ballet and borrows liberally from fashionable composers, including Rossini and Martini. As the plot of La Fille Mal Gardée mainly features country folk, the ballet is full of rustic dances portrayed in a quaint, pastoral style, including a maypole dance and the comical clog dance, where the dancer portraying the aging Widow Simone dons a pair of large wooden shoes.
Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857) Cinq Contredanses Rather than calling him the originator of Russian music, it is more accurate to call Glinka the first Russian to compose European music with a “Russian accent.” His first opera, “A Life for the Tsar,” is a brilliant melding of Rossini-styled opera with Russian folk music, language, and literary traditions. This melding reflects Glinka’s migratory education—he’d spent over three years living in Italy and also lived for periods in Paris and Berlin. Much of Glinka’s piano music reflects his time spent in France. In tonight’s selection, he borrowed the form and style of the contredanse, the French answer to the English country dance. The French contredanse was made popular by major composers of the Classical Era, including Beethoven and Mozart. French contredanses included several dance forms: the cotillion for example, was used by Glinka. By the mid-19th century this evolved into the quadrille, a dance that became hugely popular in the United States.
Pablo Sarasate (1844-1908) Spanish Dance Op. 23, No. 2: 'Zapateado' Sarasate’s idiomatic writing for the violin, coupled with his talent for producing real show stoppers, resulted in the composition of a handful of perennially popular encores, many of which reference the composer’s Spanish heritage. His second Spanish dance, titled “Zapateado” is inspired by a rural Andalusian dance based on Romani music, as well as the rhythmic footwork of flamenco dancers. Wearing special shoes developed for flamenco, the dancers use toe tapping and heel stomps to create a complex and energetic rhythmic interplay with the accompanying guitarist. A form of zapateado has developed in most Spanish-speaking countries, especially in Mexico, where it has become a distinctive dance style in its own right used to accompany the huapango and mariachi music.
Ferenc Farkas (1905-2000) Partita all’ungaresca: VI Herduckentanz While studying with Ottarino Respigji in Rome for two years, Ferenc Farkas was encouraged to mine manuscripts for ancient Hungarian melodies and folksongs. Farkas would collect melodies, some of them very brief and fragmentary with simple bass lines, and repurpose them into larger musical forms, enriching the dance tunes with counterpoint and voice leading. The Partita All’ungaresca from 1974 uses melodies from six different 16th century handwritten manuscripts. The energetic final movement in this dance suite, called “Herduckentanz” is based on one of the oldest peasant dances known to have originated in Eastern Central Europe called the Hajdu Dance. Men would dance in a circle, usually with a weapon such as a sword or an ax, and would make fencing motions with many acrobatic jumps and squats. Early sources note the rowdy nature of the dance, which would’ve been accompanied by bagpipes and drums.
John Playford (1623-1686) The English Dancing Master: Stanes Morris John Playford’s 1651 collection The English Dancing Master, or Plaine and easie Rules for the Dancing of Country Dances, with the Tune to each Dance, is one of the most important repositories of 17th-century English instrumental tunes. His sons continued collecting the dances until well after Playford’s death, and the various volumes contained instructions and music for over 500 country dances. The tunes collected by Playford and sons were quite varied. Many were folk melodies, but others were especially composed for patrons, or brought from Italy, Germany and France. Playford’s Dancing Master, became one of if not the major source for contradance and group dancing in England. Much of the music used in Morris Dancing, England’s most recognizable folk dance tradition, originates from its pages, although Morris dancing does not use the dance steps described in Playford.
Hamish MacCunn (1868-1916) 6 Scottish Dances, Op. 28 III. Gillie's Dance Dropping out of the Royal College of Music in 1886 seemed to have little effect on Hamish MacCunn’s success as both a composer and conductor. Mainly known for his Scottish overture The Land of the Mountain and the Flood, as well as being the go-to stand-in conductor for Thomas Beecham at Covent Garden, most of MacCunn’s compositions are descriptive and programmatic, often with literary ties to Sir Walter Scott, and are clearly influenced by Wagner. However this is not the case for his set of Scottish Dances for piano, where MacCunn instead invokes a nationalistic Scottish identity using the rhythms and forms of traditional Highland dances, while giving them a Romantic-era harmonic treatment.
Michael Doucet (b.1951) La Danse de la Vie Cajun music is one of America’s most recognizable traditional music styles, with influences from the Caribbean, France, Creole and Native American music, and even blues and rock. It also accompanies a vibrant contradancing tradition, with many cajun hits having names such as the Amedee Two Step, Bayou Waltz or Quadrille Acadien. Although very popular in Louisiana and much of the South, many Cajun music bands have not broken into the mainstream. BeauSoleil is an exception, with a 1997 grammy award for L'Amour Ou La Folie, the album from which this song is taken, and numerous appearances on national stages and film soundtracks. BeauSoleil presents all of the tenets of a traditional Cajun band: singing in Cajun French, emphasis on the button accordion and “titfer” or triangle. They also bring many new elements to their sound including rock, jazz and country. Many of BeauSoleil songs also fit squarely in the style of Zydeco, a newer subgenre of Cajun music that blends Cajun trad with R&B.
