The intimately related phenomena of dance and instrumental variation were prominent features of Spanish culture during the 17th and early 18th centuries. These variations (diferencias) on a set piece of music or choreographed movement permeated the activities of professional and amateur musicians, secular and sacred festivities, and were cultivated by the aristocracy as well as the lower class. The incorporation of variation into the instrumental music which accompanied dance enabled the instrumentalists to produce pieces of sufficient length and diversity to accommodate the needs of the dancers on different occasions. As to the two volumes which will complete this set, Volume 2 supplies a complete inventory and transcription of th e extant instrumental dance pieces and variation sets (495 pieces plus 228 pasacalles), and Volume 3 will contain the original notes in Spanish.

Vol. 1: Treatises and music ; vol. 2: choreographic descriptions with concordances of variants.

The Notes in Spanish provides the original text and quotations, already presented in English in Volume I, in their original Spanish.

Footprints of the Dance — An Early Seventeenth-Century Dance Master’s Notebook by Jennifer Nevile provides new, fascinating and detailed information on the life of an early-seventeenth-century dance master in Brussels. The dance master’s handwritten notebook contains unique material: a canon of dance figures and instructions for an exhibition with a pike; as well as signatures and general descriptions of his students, ballet plots and music associated with dancing. Reproduced for the first time are facsimile images of all the dance-related material, with transcriptions and translations of the ballet plots and instructions for the pike exhibition. The dance master is revealed as an active choreographer and performer, with strong ties to the French court musical establishment, and interested in fireworks and alchemy.

From the mid-13th to the mid-18th century the ability to dance was an important social skill for both men and women. Dance performances were an integral part of court ceremonies and festivals and, in the 17th and 18th centuries, of commercial theatrical productions. Whether at court or in the public theater danced spectacles were multimedia events that required close collaboration among artists, musicians, designers, engineers, and architects as well as choreographers. In order to fully understand these practices, it is necessary to move beyond a consideration of dance alone, and to examine it in its social context. This original collection brings together the work of 12 scholars from the disciplines of dance and music history. Their work presents a picture of dance in society from the late medieval period to the middle of the 18th century and demonstrates how dance practices during this period participated in the intellectual, artistic, and political cultures of their day.