[SCA-Dance] Timing of the seguito spezzato in Il Ballarino

[Alexander Clark]

I'm not convinced by the reasoning quoted below, because I've found my
hypothetical version to be practicable, though not easy. What sems
more difficult is doing this hypothetical version before a cadenza,
but I would not want to assume that it wasn't done that way just
because it isn't easy.

But this analysis is suggesting something to me that might be a more
fruitful line of inquiry. Do we have any evidence that would tell us
what Caroso really means by "principiar la seconda battuta" and "fine
della battuta"? Can it be proven that (if one counts like
"one-and-ah-two-and-ah") these are either "ah" followed by "two", or
"two" followed by "ah"? I had initially assumed the latter, but that
might be because of my modern American background.

I suppose the first thing to look at would be the ending of this same
rule. When Caroso says, "Poi nel principiar la terza battuta, ha da
passar' innanzi col destro . . .", does this mean that the right foot
is being placed on the ground, or very specifically that it is moving
but not yet being placed on the ground, or does it not clearly mean
one or the other? If this is where the foot is placed, then
"principiar" apparently refers to the "three", but if the foot must
not yet be placed, then it refers to "ah" before "three". (Of course,
having but a smattering of Italian, I hardly know the answer to this
question.)

-- 
Henry/Alex

On 8/4/13, Mary Railing <mrailing2 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Remember that each step begins on the upbeat so that the foot *lands* on the
> first beat. That means that after the first spezzato, the trailing foot is
> already coming forward at the end of the previous measure (beat 6, if you
> are counting two triple beats as 1-6). So although it is possible to do
> *one* spezzato with the heel of the leading foot not coming down until beat
> 6, a series of spezzati requires one to anticipate the beat by bringing the
> trailing foot up to the leading foot on beat 3, rising, and lowering the
> body and the heel of the leading foot on beat 4. In theory, one could
> postpone the lowering until beat 5, but cascarda music tends to accent beats
> 1,3,4,6.
>
> --Urraca
>
> ________________________________
>  From: Alexander Clark <alexbclark at pennswoods.net>
> To: sca-dance at sca-dance.org
> Sent: Saturday, August 3, 2013 8:20 PM
> Subject: [SCA-Dance]  Timing of the seguito spezzato in Il Ballarino
>
>
> Something that was on my mind sometimes while at Pennsic is the
> question of whether we're doing any close approximation of the seguito
> spezzato. You see, the way I read Il Ballarino (the source of many of
> our dances with this seguito in them), the actions match the beats as
> follows:
>
> Beat 1: Step on left foot.
>
> Beginning of beat 2: Place right foot by left heel and raise both
> heels and the body.
>
> Ending of beat 2: Body and left heel come down again.
>
> And on beat 3, one begins the second seguito spezzato.
>
> So my understanding is that if you were to count this as six quick
> beats (with stress on 1 and 4), the right foot would be placed on 4,
> and one would come down onto the full left foot on 6. That doesn't
> seem to be how we usually do it. Is there some evidence against this
> version?
>
> --
> Henry/Alex
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