EVOLUTION OF DANCE MUSIC
Did space permit, it would be interesting to study in detail the dances of various epochs and countries, coloured, like the Love which originated them, by national peculiarities—the Polish mazourka and polonaise, the Spanish fandango, the Viennese waltz, the Parisian cancan, etc. Suffice it to note the great difference between the dances of a few generations ago and those of to-day, as shown most vividly in the evolution of dance-music.
The earliest dance-tunes are vocal, and were sung by the (professional) dancers themselves, in the days when the young were not yet allowed to meet, converse, and flirt and dance. Subsequently, the transference of dance-music to instruments played by others gave the dancers opportunity to perform more complicated figures, and made it possible to converse. But even as late as the eighteenth century dancing and dance-music were characterised by a stately reserve, slowness, and pompous dignity which showed at once that they had nothing to do with Romantic Love. It was not the fiery, passionate youths who danced these solemnly stupid minuets, gavottes, sarabandes, and allemandes, but the older folks, whose perruques, and collars, and frills, and bloated clothes would not have enabled them to execute rapid movements even if the warm blood of youth had coursed in their veins.
How all this artificiality and snail-like pomp has been brushed away by triumphant Romantic Love, which has secured for modern lovers the privilege of dancing together before they are married and cease to care for it! True, we still have the monotonous soporific quadrille, as if to remind us of bygone times; but the true modern dance is the round dance, which differs from the stately mediæval dance as a jolly rural picnic does from a formal morning call.
The difference between the mediæval and the modern dance is thus indicated by F. Bremer:—
“Peculiar to modern dance-music is the round dance, especially the waltz; and it is in consequence warmer than the older dance-music, more passionate in expression, in rhythm and modulation more sharply accented. As its creator we must regard Carl Maria von Weber, who, in his Invitation to Dance, struck the keynote through which subsequently, in the music of Chopin, Lanner, Strauss, Musard, etc., utterance was given to the whole gamut of dreamy, languishing, sentimental, ardent passion. The consequence was the displacement of the stately, measured dances by impetuous, chivalrous forms; and in place of the former naïve sentimentality and childish mirth, it is the rapture of Love that constitutes the spirit of modern dance-music.”
Not to speak of more primitive dance-tunes, what a difference there is between the slow and dreary monotony of eighteenth century dances and a Viennese waltz of to-day! The vast superiority of a Strauss waltz lies in this—that it is no longer a mere rhythmic noise calculated to guide the steps, and skips, and bows, and evolutions of the dancers, but the symphonic accompaniment to the first act in the drama of Romantic Love. It recognises the fact that Courtship is the prime object of the dance. Hence, though still bound by the inevitable dance rhythm, Strauss is ever trying to break loose from it, to secure that freedom and variety of rhythm which is needed to give full utterance to passion. Note the slow, pathetic introductions; the signs in the score indicating an accelerated or retarded tempo when the waltz is played at a concert, where the uniformity of ballroom movement is not called for; note what subtle use he makes of all the other means of expressing amorous feeling—the wide melodic intervals, the piquant, stirring harmonies, the exquisitely melancholy flashes of instrumental colouring, alternating with cheerful moments, showing a subtle psychologic art of translating the Mixed Moods of Love into the language of tones.
In the waltzes, mazourkas, and polonaises of Chopin we see still more strikingly that the true function of dance-music is amorous. Even as Dante’s Love for Beatrice was too super-sensual, too ethereal for this world, so Chopin’s dance-pieces are too subtle, too full of delicate nuances of tempo and Love episodes, to be adapted to a ballroom with ordinary mortals. Graceful fairies alone could dance a Chopin waltz; mortals are too heavy, too clumsy. They can follow an amorous Chopin waltz with the imagination alone, which is the abode of Romantic Love. To a Strauss waltz a hundred couples may make love at once, hence he writes for the orchestra; but Chopin wrote for the parlour piano, because the feelings he utters are too deep to be realised by more than two at a time—one who plays and one who listens, till their souls dance together in an ecstatic embrace of Mutual Sympathy.