I recently had a request in email for anything I had on the Regency-era dance tune "Mr. Chivers' Whim" from a questioner who had some mismatched figures (twenty-four bars) and music (thirty-two bars) but no original sources. A little back-and-forth established that he wanted the most historical answer, which is presumably why the question came to me and not whoever popularized what they're doing under that name in eastern Europe. This isn't the first time I've had this topic come up in conversation!
So, what's going on with "Mr. Chivers' Whim"? Well, at some point in the last decade or two, the name became firmly attached to a twenty-four bar "Swedish dance", meaning a trio country dance. People in Russia are mostly dancing it to the tune "Mrs. Chivers' Favorite Waltz", which is of course a different tune, and a waltz, not a reel. Switching tunes is not inappropriate to do in a historical context, but it's incorrect to call it "Mr. Chivers' Whim" when they're dancing to "Mrs. Chivers' Favorite Waltz". The name goes with the tune, not the figures.
To compound the problem, they're often using the Spare Parts recording of "Mrs. Chivers' Favorite Waltz" from the CD The Regency Ballroom, on which it is played with a forty-eight bar repeat structure, which means that the figures cross the music oddly; it's alternately danced to AAB and BC strains (the C strain is sixteen bars long). That is actually wrong, from a historical perspective. Take a look at this video and you can see/hear the problem clearly, though I am not singling out that group in particular; there are several similar videos from different groups in different cities. That one just happened to come up first in my search results.
I'm not sure where the thirty-two bar music comes in, but there's certainly a problem here.
Let's go back to the beginning, and start with the tune, which was printed in G. M. S. Chivers' The Modern Dancing Master (London, 1822). Chivers might even have written it himself. Here's how it appeared; click to enlarge:
As printed, this looks like a twenty-four bar tune, with two strains played in an ABA pattern. And, of course, it's a reel. Here's a short clip from my fiddler friend Tim so you can hear how it sounds:
I asked Tim to play it at whatever tempo felt right to him, which ended up being about 96 beats per minute. It's a nice little piece; I especially like the second strain. But what to dance to it?
As my correspondent had already guessed, the simplest answer is that one danced whatever figures the lady or couple at the top of the set wished to dance. This is general practice for the Regency era, and Chivers in particular was quite explicit in stating that dancers might use any figures which fit a tune by length. If "Mrs. Chivers' Favorite Waltz" were a twenty-four bar tune, there wouldn't be any problem (in the historical sense) beyond the misapprehension that the figures had a name independent of the tune to which they were danced.
But what if one wishes to dance to the actual tune "Mr. Chivers' Whim" and does not want to set one's own figures, and especially wants some figures documentably paired with it? Happily, there are options! Chivers must have liked the tune, since he paired it with four different sets of figures for three different styles of dance, all published in The Modern Dancing Master and later reprinted in Chivers' The Dancing Master in Miniature (c1825). All four are twenty-four bars long, which confirms that the music should be played as written (not always a given!)
First, as a regular (triple minor proper) country dance, albeit one in a late style with quadrille-influenced figures:
Second, as the second tune in a five-part country dance, for which the first tune is played for the first two parts (sixteen bars) and the second for the last three (twenty-four bars):
Third, as a "Swedish dance", performed by trios instead of couples; these are the figures people have taken up and attached the name to:
Fourth, as a "L'Union Dance", which is a format described by Chivers as triple minor with the first couple improper and figures drawn from quadrilles as much as country dances:
One can't pick out a single set of these figures and call it "Mr. Chivers' Whim"; which would one pick? These are all generic figures that were printed under the tune name but, to quote Chivers himself, "are so arranged, that any New Tune, or one particularly wished to be danced that is not in the collection, can be easily selected, observing that the tune contains the same number of bars as the Figure requires."
By way of example, in A Pocket Companion to the French and English Country Dancing (c1819), Chivers used the same figures as for the country dance above for the tune "La Poule":
No tunes were included in Pocket Companion, but Chivers published "La Poule" in The Modern Dancing Master, and it is the same as the tune of that name from Edward Payne's first set of quadrilles. The connection to the third figure of the French quadrille is obvious to anyone who has danced it.
I don't have any record of the figures for the five-part country dance, the Swedish dance, and the L'Union dance being attached to other tunes, though all three of those dance formats are relatively rare and therefore don't have many figures to compare.
In summary:
- "Mr. Chivers' Whim" is the name of a tune. It is not the name of a particular set of figures.
- One can dance any of the above four figures, in their various formats, to the tune "Mr. Chivers' Whim" and be correct.
- One could also dance the above figures to any other twenty-four-bar tune, in which case one would say one is dancing [to] whatever that tune happens to be called, and be just as correct. One would need to pair it with another tune for the five-part figure.
- One could also dance any other twenty-four-bar figure for any style of country dance to the tune "Mr. Chivers' Whim" and once again be just as correct.
I'm not aware of any full recording of the tune "Mr. Chivers' Whim", so if one wants to use it, live musicians will be required.
Special thanks to Tim MacDonald for making the music clip!
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