As to the strange title of his work, its meaning will of course be apparent to all who know anything of the history of the subject, for they will remember that the Greek word for the dance was Orcheisthai (the Orchestra being the floor-space where the dancers performed); and so Orchésographie is merely a treatise on the writing of dances; that is, the setting of them down in such form that subsequent readers could study the dances therefrom.
The recording of the actual steps of dances has always been a problem, and other leading masters in France (such as Beauchamps, Pécourt, Feuillet) and in England (such as Weaver) had several more or less successful shots during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries at inventing a sort of dance-shorthand.
The very first author to attempt such a thing with any real success was apparently our friend Arbeau; for earlier works, such as that of Caroso, are very poor. Into the full details of his system, however, I do not propose to enter now, for the matter is somewhat technical. The interest of Arbeau’s work, however, is by no means mainly technical.
The book, which was published at Lengres in 1588, is written in the form of a dialogue “by which everyone can easily learn and practise the honest exercise of the dances,” to give the quaint phraseology of the original, the two speakers being Arbeau the author, and Capriol, a youth who some few years earlier had left Lengres to go to Paris and Orleans and now, on his return, has sought out Arbeau to learn from him all that he can of dancing. Thoinot at first does not recognise him because, as he says, “You have grown so, and I believe that you have also enlarged your spirit by virtue and knowledge.” He asks the young man’s opinion of the study of Law, remarking that he was also once a law-student.
Capriol expresses his admiration for the law as a necessary institution, but complains that his neglect of the polite arts, while in the company of the Orleans law-students, has made him dull and wooden. He says that his knowledge of fencing and tennis makes him an acceptable companion with other youths, but he fails as a dancer to please the demoiselles, a point on which, it seems to him, depends the whole reputation of a young man who contemplates marriage. Then follows some sound advice, with curious details, from Arbeau, on the advantages of dancing as a matrimonial agent, and he acclaims the art as one necessary to social welfare.
Capriol agrees and expresses his disgust that the dance should have been so subject to bitter attacks, of which he quotes historic instances. Arbeau neatly responds that, “For one who has blamed, an infinity have esteemed and praised the art,” also following with quoted examples, saying, indeed, that “Le S. prophete royal dauid dāça au deuāt de l’arche de Dieu,” or, in other words, that “the holy prophet, King David, danced before the Ark of God.”
In the course of their conversation, Arbeau makes learned references to the derivation of the word “Dance,” mentioning others then in use that were allied to it, such as saulter (from the Latin saltare), caroler (hence our “carols,” or songs which, originally, accompanied certain religious dances), baler, and trepiner, Capriol remembers that the ancients had three kinds of dances: the sedate Emmeleia, the gay Kordax, and the mixed Sikinnis, the first of which Arbeau likens (quite unhistorically) to the pavanes and basse-dance of his own period; the second, to the gaillardes, voltas, corantos, gavottes (note that—a reference to the gavotte in 1588!) and branles (or, as Elizabethan Englishmen called them, “brawls”); while the third, he declares, must have been similar to the branles doubles and to “the dance which we call bouffons or matachins.”
Then, very wisely, he points out that most objections to dancing have been provoked not by decent but by—objectionable dancing! And as Capriol hastily assures his austere but kindly teacher that he wants none of that sort, but that he is anxious to teach his twelve-year-old sister what Arbeau is good enough to teach him, the old man proceeds on most polite and methodical lines.
Arbeau, truly remarking that rhythm is the basis of the dance, as it was always of all military marching and evolutions, then goes on to give a wonderful disquisition on that glorious instrument, the drum, and a masterly analysis of its rhythmic possibilities, both as an inspirer of soldiers on the march and as a stimulus to the dance.
The old man’s enthusiasm for an instrument that has never really received its due homage is truly fine, and he gives no less than seventy-six examples of drum-beat on a common-time basis. He follows this with an exposition of fife-playing (with musical examples); his earnest plea for this study of drum (tambour) and fife being only preparatory to a study of the basse-dances, which were properly accompanied by both instruments.