[SCA-Dance] Black Almain question/speculation

[Greg Lindahl]

On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 08:22:48AM -0700, Jeff Suzuki wrote:

> The Black Almain is one of the many pieces of music
> that have contrafacts written for them.  The
> difficulty is that the contrafacts don't quite match
> the music.

Which music? Perhaps the dance added repeats to the usual music? I'll
double-check tonight that the transcription from Simpson I have is
correct, but note that it has a lot less repeating than the dance
does. Simpson has 11 doubles worth of music, the ballad has 12 lines
of text, and the dance has 18 doubles worth of steps.

> In support of #1, it seems to me that Black Almain has
> certain features not present in other almains,

There are some other measures with sets and turns. The slips are
pretty unique. Black Almain does fit the general pattern of
"processional section, followed by something that doesn't go
anywhere". It is unusual in that the second section is a lot longer
than the first.

-- Gregory