La Musette is one of the many (many!) little dances and variations found in both M. B. Gilbert’s collection Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and G. W. Lopp’s even larger compilation, La Danse (Paris, 1903), much of which seems to have been copied and translated directly from Gilbert. The dance was classified under “Redowa and Mazurka” in Gilbert and “Les Mazurkas” in Lopp and should be performed to music with that accent.

The first measure of La Musette is a polka redowa step (slide-cut-leap, rhythm 123) minus its initiating hop. The second measure was written out by Gilbert as cut-chassé-cut, in the rhythm 1&23. Lopp’s description is essentially the same.

I find La Musette easier to conceptualize and dance if I think of the second measure as “cut-cut-slide-cut”, very similar to a racket, though not precisely matching any racket pattern. Since a “chassé” counted &2 consists of “cut and slide” counted &2, this is purely a mental trick. I simply find it easier to think of it as a “cut-cut” followed by a “slide-cut”.

The dancers start La Musette in a closed ballroom position, joined hands pointing along line of dance. The steps given below are the gentleman’s; the lady dances opposite.

Reconstruction (four bars of redowa/mazurka music)
1 Slide left foot along line of dance, angling slightly toward the center
2 Cut; draw right foot to left and extend left to 2nd raised
3 Leap onto left foot across line of dance, making a quarter-turn
(gentleman’s back line of dance, lady facing line of dance
4 Cut; draw right foot to left. displacing left to 2nd raised,
& Cut; draw left foot to right, displacing right
(over elbows, angling slightly toward the wall)
5 Slide right to 2nd
6 Cut; draw left foot to right, displacing right to 2nd raised
Repeat from the beginning, leading with right foot

Performance and reconstruction notes
The only real question in reconstructing La Musette is whether or not the dancers actually make a half turn and travel directly along the line of dance throughout or whether the dancers just zig-zag along diagonally. While I cannot completely rule out turning, neither Gilbert nor Lopp directly state that there is a turn, so I have chosen the latter option. The zig-zag track is very characteristic of the racket family, of which La Musette is at the very least a close cousin. Essentially, the cut-cut (4&) is performed with the gentleman facing line of dance and the lady’s back to line of dance as a sort of pause-in-place before they continue diagonally along on 56. This zig-zagging is explained in my introduction to the racket.

While it may have been intended as a sequence to be danced by all in unision, La Musette is leadable as a variation with a partner already experienced at rackets and their little cut-cut patterns.

Music
There may well have been a specific piece of music for La Musette to be danced as a sequence dance, but I have not been able to locate it. With such a brief sequence, it’s also quite possible it was meant only as a variation when dancing in the polka redowa/polka mazurka/etc. family of dances. It can be danced to any mazurka- or redowa-accented tune, though one that mirrors its 123-4&56 pattern will fit most nicely.

Lopp gave his standard tempo of 144 beats per minute. Gilbert did not specify one for La Musette in particular, but he gave the same 144 bpm as the default for the basic redowa and mazurka at the beginning of that section of his book.