Renaissance Dances

The most widespread of Renaissance instrumental genres was the dance, a reflection of the great popularity of dancing at the time. Many dance types are described in detail in sixteenth-century instruction books — the steps themselves, and also their order or sequence. (In this regard, old dances were closer to square dances or ballroom dancing than to some modern social dancing, where there is no fixed order for steps or movements.) One of the most popular was the pavan (pa-váhn), a solemn dance in duple meter, with the participants stepping and stopping formally. It was usually paired with the galliard, a faster dance in triple meter.

Simpler, less formal Renaissance dance types include the Italian saltarello; the Irish jig, known also in Scotland and the north of England; and the French bransle, whose name is related to our word brawl. The Renaissance also saw elaborately choreographed ballets, court dances in which kings and nobles participated.

Conforming to the dance steps, dance music was written in easy-to-follow phrases, almost always four to eight bars long. Ending with especially clear cadences, the phrases were each played twice in succession to produce forms such as a a b b or a a b b c c.

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Instrumental music at work: a dance at the French royal court, c. 1580. The leaping couple tells us the dance is a lively one. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes, France/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.