DANCES WITH VOCAL PROTOTYPES IN PIERRE ATTAINGNANTS DANSERIES. ARRANGEMENT TECHNIQUES AND PERFORMANCE PRACTICE

Abstract

Since the dawn of history dance and music have accompanied people in everyday life and during special events and ceremonies. Even though at present dance is usually associated with a non-professional form of entertainment or a field of art practiced professionally, it has not always been so. In the Renaissance it was not only used for entertainment but it was also a significant part of court etiquette. What is important, dance music creators from that time were often inspired by vocal compositions. Particularly good examples of these dependencies can be seen in some of the titled works included by the Parisian printer Pierre Attaingnant in seven books called Danseries, which were published in the period of 1530-1557, as well as in various lute and keyboard tabulatures. We are referring to such dances in which the melody of the main voice (less commonly tenor or the remaining parts) was based on the music material taken from polyphonic chansons popular at that time.This article is aimed at presenting arrangement techniques that were used in French music of the 16th century by adapting vocal compositions for dance. Considering the fact that the number of this type of compositions is enormous, limiting the research material turned out necessary. The choice of the seven books of Danseries was dictated by stylistic coherence of the compositions included therein as they were written over a relatively short period and most of them have a four-voice texture in order to be performed by different kinds of instrumental ensembles. The entire article has been structured into three chapters. The first chapter discusses the content of subsequent by Danseries books Pierre Attaingnant, with an emphasis on works that have titles as they can show a connection to vocal music. Selected compositions whose prototypes were possible to identify are discussed in chapter two. The goal of the analysis was primarily to determine the dependencies between a formal structure of the compositions and the choreography of individual dances and to point to the similarities and differences between vocal and instrumental versions, also in terms of music expression. The last chapter is supplementary, and it is devoted to selected aspects of performance practice referring to that repertoire, especially the topics of orchestration and ornamentation.