CD Review: Minuets & Optional Dances ~ Ignatius Sancho

I recently saw the eighteenth-century African-British composer Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780) described as "largely forgotten", which struck me as an odd way to describe someone who's been the subject of a modern biography (Ignatius Sancho: African Man of Letters, by Reyahn King, Sukhdev Sandhu, James Walvin and Jane Girdham (1997)) and a one-man play in both London and New York City, recently had a new collection of his letters published (Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, edited by Vincent Carretta (2015)), has had both facsimile and modern editions of his music published (including Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780), An Early African Composer in England: The Collected Editions of His Music in Facsimile, by Josephine B. Wright (1981) and at least five books of his works in modern notation from Africanus Editions), whose music is being recorded and performed, and, last but not least, whose dances have been the subject of at least a couple of books of reconstructions.  We should all be so forgotten!

It occurred to me that I had one of those recordings, Minuets & Optional Dances (2015), by the Afro-American Chamber Music Society Orchestra, tucked away somewhere.  I hadn't ever done much with it because it consists primarily of minuets, which are not something I spend much time on.  But the 240th anniversary of his death seems like a good day to dig it out!

As can be deduced from the title, the album consists primarily of minuets - twelve our of fourteen tracks, to be precise - with a gavotte and a country dance tune added in.  The minuets and the gavotte are taken from Sancho's Minuets &c &c for the Violin Mandolin German-Flute and Harpsichord, London, c1770.  The country dance tune, "Lady Mary Montagus Reel", comes from his Twelve Country Dances for the Year 1779.  The instrumentation consists of harpsichord, violin, flute, oboe, cello, and horns.  The tracks were recorded live, but the sound quality is quite good.

I'm not going to go through the minuets in detail, but I will note that the tempi range from a dirge-like 54 beats per minute to a brisk 126, and that most of them are thirty-two bars long, meaning sixteen six-beat minuet steps, with a few outliers as high as forty-eight, sixty-four, and ninety-six bars.  The minuets included are the first through eighth, two versions of the eleventh, the twelfth, and the thirteenth.  Styles range from dreamy to positively frisky; there's something here for every taste in minuets.  I found the tracks generally steady in tempo and danceable, despite slowing down on the final measures.  Both the third and fifth minuets have pauses and ritards that require more attention by the dancer, and the sixth has numerous pauses early on, though it eventually steadies and becomes delightful.  The third also, unaccountably, has several seconds of ambient noise at the end of the track, which ought to have been trimmed during the production of the album.

A list with the basics:

Minuet 1st in D - 126 bpm, 48 bars
Minuet 2nd in E-Flat - 120 bpm, 32 bars
Minuet 3rd in E-Flat [pauses] - 123 bpm, 48 bars
Minuet 4th in F - 105 bpm, 32 bars
Minuet 5th in C [ritards] - 114 bpm, 96 bars
Minuet 6th in B-Flat [pauses] - 106 bpm, 32 bars
Minuet 7th in G - 118 bpm, 32 bars
Minuet 8th in E-Flat - 119 bpm, 64 bars
Minuet 11th in G Minor - 86 bpm, 72 bars
Minuet 11th in G Minor with Harpsichord - 54 bpm, 32 bars
Minuet 12th in A - 115 bpm, 32 bars
Minuet 13th in E-Flat - 91 bpm, 64 bars

Of the "optional dances":

The gavotte is a lovely forty-bar piece played at 126 beats per minute.  I have even less to say about gavottes than minuets, but it makes for lovely listening.

I will say a bit about the country dance piece, "Lady Mary Montagus [sic] Reel", which may have been dedicated either to the Lady Mary Montagu (1711-1775) who was the daughter of Sancho's patron, the second Duke of Montagu (1690-1749), or to the Duke's wife, also named Mary (1689-1751) who was also a patron of Sancho's but whom I believe would have been more correctly referred to as the Duchess of Montagu.  The younger Mary inherited her father's estates, since the Duke and Duchess had no surviving son, and her husband was eventually created Duke of Montagu in a new creation of the title.

The recording is 16 bars of 4/4 time played at 122 beats per minute, which makes it sound to the dancer more like 32 bars of 2/4 time.  It is only played three times through, which is sadly short for a country dance, though it could be edited for more repetitions or perhaps used for a sixteen-bar figure six times through.  It's a lively tune, well-played and accompanied by clapping.

The dance figures given with it in Sancho's book make me question whether he really ought to be credited with the figures as well as the music, since they are generic ones used with a number of other tunes both in the 1770s and later.  Here's a facsimile of Sancho's tune and the figures; click to enlarge:

The same basic figure can be found attached to the following other tunes, and probably others, which were published before Sancho's book:

1. "Maggotty Nan" in A Choice Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances,Vol. 6th, 1751 (Johnson)

2. "The Recruits" in Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1774 (Thompson), republished in Thompson's Compleat Collection of 200 Fashionable Country Dances. Vol. 4 (1780)

3. "Miss Butt’s Favorite", in Two Hundred & four Favourite Country Dances, c1775 (Straight & Skillern); Bride's Favorite Collection of Two Hundred Select Country Dances, c1775; and Skillern's Compleat Collection of Two Hundred & Four Reels and Country Dances, c1776.

4. "Lloyd’s Whim", in Bride's Favorite Collection of Two Hundred Select Country Dances, c1775; Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1775  (Thompson); and Thompson's Compleat Collection of 200 Fashionable Country Dances. Vol. 4, c1780.

5. "Pretty & Kind" in Bride's Favorite Collection of Two Hundred Select Country Dances, c1775.

6. "Smith’s Ramble" in Bride's Favorite Collection of Two Hundred Select Country Dances, c1775.

7. "Lord Ogleby" in Bride's Favorite Collection of Two Hundred Select Country Dances, c1775.

8. "Camberwell Frights" in Bride's Favorite Collection of Two Hundred Select Country Dances, c1775.

Note that six of these are from the same book; two of them are even on consecutive pages!

The same figures are also found somewhat later with at least four other tunes:

9. "Gloster House", in Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1798 (Cahusac).

10. "Buonaparte’s Expedition", in Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1799 (Skillern).

11. "The Duches [sic] of Bedford’s Reel" in Twelve Favorite Country Dances, 1806 (Preston).

12. "The Huntsman" in Twenty four Country Dances for the Year 1806 (Preston).

Looking at this list, which is taken from the useful Dance Figures Index: English Country Dances, 1650-1833 database and is probably incomplete, I am reluctant to credit Sancho with choreographing the figures.  His book does specify, unusually, that the turn is a half-turn and the right and left is with the top couple.  The other versions of the figure that I've been able to look at do not specify either, so a bit more attention may have been paid in Sancho's publication.  But the figures are just too generic and too frequently used for me to see them as a meaningful piece of choreography in the modern sense.

Here are a few examples of the same figures published with other tunes; click to enlarge:

About Ignatius Sancho
Many words have been written about Charles Ignatius Sancho (including a basic biography on Wikipedia), so I won't try to do more than sum up his fascinating life: born in Africa (or possibly on a slave ship), raised in England as a slave, eventually becoming a servant of the second Duke of Montagu and from there a writer, abolitionist, shopkeeper, composer, and the first known person of African descent to vote in a British election.  At left is his portrait, painted by Thomas Gainsborough around 1768.

Much more about Sancho's life and accomplishments may be found at his page on AfriClassical.com and on Professor Brycchan Carey's website; the latter includes an excellent bibliography of Sancho-related works.  The CD itself comes only with brief liner notes.

I recommend Minuets & Optional Dances as both dance music (at least for those who do a lot of minuets!) and a listening album.  It may be purchased from Apple Music or from Amazon (streaming, mp3, or CD) via the link below.