I ordered the Grandview Victorian Orchestra's CD Elegant Music from Times Gone By in the wake of a pleasant email exchange with musical director John Reading about quadrille music last autumn. The album is a mix of country (contra) dance medleys of various sorts mixed with a few other tunes and played on an interesting instrumental mix of piano, fiddle, hammered dulcimer, bodhran, shaker, banjo, and acoustic bass. I'm not sure about the acoustic bass, but the other instruments are legitimate for late nineteenth-century America and provide a more "rural" sound than most of the music I use, very appropriate for country dance tunes.
The music mix is definitely from "times gone by", though not all of those times are actually Victorian and will need to be considered on a case-by-case basis for historical events. The arrangements are really lovely, though, and it makes a great listening CD even if not every track is strictly correct and/or usable for historical dancing.
My comments on the individual tracks follow.
The non-medleys include:
- the classic mid-nineteenth century tune "Jenny Lind Polka" at a cheerful 118 beats per minute
- a "Spanish Waltz" (32b) played three times through with an eight-bar coda, which is not enough to use for a "Spanish Dance" set without some editing. One could use it for plain waltzing, but experienced dancers will associate the tune with the "Spanish Dance" and might find it a little disconcerting.
- "The Duke of Kent's Waltz", a dance tune from c1800 which is popular with modern Regency/Jane Austen dancers, played with a 32-bar repeat three times through. Along with being decidedly pre-Victorian, the short recording makes it tough to use for a country dance, though it would be fine for just waltzing.
- a tune labeled "Varsouvianna Waltz" which is actually the famous "Put Your Little Foot". I don't know whether this tune dates back to the nineteenth century or not; I can't seem to trace it any further back than the 1940s, though I'm not enough of a music historian to say for certain that it's not nineteenth century. It would certainly be useful for the well-documented twentieth century American varsoviennes/varsouviannas.
But the real treat on this album is the country dance medleys, mostly with thirty-two-bar repeats played nine times through, usually three times for each tune in the medley. Two tracks are only six times through. It's very difficult to find long recorded tracks for country dancing, so seven on a single CD is enough to make me want to be a little flexible about their origins.
The medley tracks are mix of jigs, reels, and polkas/galops. The tempo varies from about 101 bpm to around 126, with some of the tracks speeding up on the later repeats. I've noted which tracks mix jigs and reels, lest anyone try to use them for a tune requiring a jig and be unpleasantly surprised at the time signature shift, but I haven't sorted out all the reels and polkas/galops.
My notes below on the tunes are drawn from fairly superficial research. Some of the tunes are definitely eighteenth- or nineteenth-century, and some are twentieth-century, and some I'm simply not sure about and not inclined to spend hours researching without some critical reason to do so. It would have been really helpful to have thorough set of liner notes instead of just the names for each track. But all of them are, to my ear, sufficiently traditional in musical style to be acceptable for anything but the strictest historical events, though I must reiterate that the sound is definitely on the rural side and the country dance medleys do not suggest "sophisticated upper-class urban ballroom" to me.
A list of the medleys:
- All The Way To Galway/69th Street (32b x 6). I believe that the first tune is nineteenth-century and the second is twentieth century.
- Bay Of Fundy/Grande Chaine/Hommage à Edmond Parizeau (32b x 9). I believe these are all twentieth-century French-Canadian tunes.
- Blackthorn Stick/Lilting Banshee/Red Haired Boy (32b x 9; jig (6x) and reel (3x)). Irish tunes, probably all nineteenth-century.
- Galopede/Farewell To Whiskey/Mason's Apron (32b x 9). All of these tunes are late eighteenth or nineteenth century.
- Jefferson & Liberty/Rose Tree (32b x 6; jig (3x) and reel (3x)). The first tune is early nineteenth-century. I'm not sure about the second.
- Liberty/Temperance/Growling Old Man, Grumbling Old Woman (32b x 9). "Temperance" is probably nineteenth-century. "Growling Old Man, Grumbling Old Woman" appears to be twentieth-century French-Canadian. I'm not sure about "Liberty".
- Opera Reel/The Girl I Left Behind Me/Soldier's Joy (32b x 9). This track is one hundred percent documentable nineteenth-century tunes, including the classic "Soldier's Joy"
- Seneca Square Dance/Yellow Rose Of Texas/Round The Horn (32b x 9). "Yellow Rose of Texas" is a mid-nineteenth century American minstrel song. I'm not sure about the other two.
- Whiskey Before Breakfast/Green Mountain Petronella/Arkansas Traveler (32b x 9). "Arkansas Traveler" is nineteenth-century. "Whiskey Before Breakfast" is twentieth-century. I'm not sure about "Green Mountain Petronella".
Length as relates to danceability: six times through works for a historical "snowball"-style country dance progression for a three-couple set, either duple or triple minor. Nine times through works for a four-couple set with a historical duple minor progression.
Despite the unusual music mix and varying usability of the tracks, Elegant Music from Times Gone By is delightful enough listening that I happily recommend it, with a caveat about being careful about using it for strict historical dancing.
The CD may be purchased directly from the Grandview Victorian Orchestra at their website, where you can also hear clips of a few of the tunes.
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