[SCA-Dance] Maundering about "Glory of the West"

[White, John]

> From: Tim McDaniel
> 
> I couldn't get the steps in the Terpsichore at the Tower booklet to
> work as-is (<http://www.rendancedb.org/dance_detail.php?id=41> points
> to the 14th ed., which matches the current 16th).  It shows Ch1 as 10
> measures, Ch2 as 9, and Ch3 as 12 (with half of a handed square hey as
> 4 measures, about half speed).
> 
As an aside, I'm coming to think that it is possible to have both verse
repeat and chorus repeat variations within a single dance (Picking of
Sticks is the most well known, but not the only, example of this).  However,
by this I mean repeating the whole phrase a varying number of times, which
would not come anywhere close to explaining the above varying phrase lengths
indicated above.

> I checked Playford (all these are linked to from that DB entry).
> Dafydd's version looks closer to Playford and looks easier to dance to
> me.  E.g., Playford doesn't say to repeat the first chorus, and if
> done once it's a good speed.
> 
> What's now puzzling me are the verses.  Playford has
> 
>      Meet a D. fall back, open and close _._
>      fall back a D. meet, open and close _:_
> 
>      Sides with the Co.We.set to them _._
>      sides with your owne Wo. set to
>      her _:_
> 
>      Armes as you sided _:_
> 
> Dafydd's version has "set and turn".  I notice that Playford has "set"
> without "and turne".  Of the Playford dances that I'm really familiar
> with that have set-and-turn, Rufty Tufty, Argeers, If All the World
> Were Paper, Grimstock, Jenny Pluck Pears, all specify "set and turn".
> I got corrected here when I asked about Halfe Hannikin and assumed
> that "sides all" meant "side left, side right".

To clarify my choice, in determining what "open and close" - specifically,
how fast to do the separate/come together again - I used both the existing
music (which Lady Grainne, a musician as well as a dance teacher, seemed 
to have no trouble with) for the verse and the subsequent instructions.  I
believe that the "set" in the verse means set and turn simply because the
musical phrase is built up of 2 repeats of 4 measures, which means that the
time you have to fill.  Just as in Pattricke, where setting and turning
is seldom mentioned even where we know it needs to be, there does not seem
to be a good reason to leave out the turning, certainly not over stretching
out the setting into a full measure to each side, or repeating it.

> So I'm tentatively thinking "set and turn".  For "open and close", is
> two bransle steps away from one's partner and back too un-English
> Country Dance?  I can't think of any ECD that has bransle steps,
> unless I justify them as slow slips, but Dafydd's notion of "take a
> small double sideways away from your partner, still holding hands"
> doesn't strike me as obviously right.
> 
While I may have written "double sideways", what I usually do is two
singles sideways to separate, and two singles sideways to come together
(step, close, step, close).  But it is one measure out, one measure back -
how one's feet accomplish that isn't vitally important to me.

> Danett de Lincoln
> --
> Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com

       \\Dafydd Cyhoeddwr (more to come)