Branle

Branle d'Ossau by Alfred Dartiguenave, 1855–1856

A branle (pronounced bran(ə)l)—also bransle, brangle, brawl, brawle, brall(e), braul(e), or (Scot.) brantle (OED)) is a type of French dance popular from the early 16th century to the present, danced by couples in either a line or a circle. The term also refers to the music and the characteristic step of the dance.

History

Beginnings and courtly adoption

The name branle derives from the French verb branler (to shake, wave, sway, wag, wobble), referring to the side-to-side movement of a circle or chain of dancers holding hands or linking arms (Enc.Brit 2016). Dances of this name are encountered from about 1500 and the term is used for dances still danced in France today (Heartz 2001). Before this the word is encountered in dance only as the "swaying" step of the basse danse.

The branle was danced by a chain of dancers, usually in couples, with linked arms or holding hands. The dance alternated a number of larger sideways steps to the left (often four) with the same number of smaller steps to the right so that the chain moved gradually to the left.

Although originally French dances of rustic provenance, danced to the dancers' singing, the branle was adopted, like other folk-dances, into aristocratic use by the time that printed books allow us to reconstruct the dances. A variety of branles, attributed to different regions, were danced in sequence, so that the suite of branle music gives one of the earliest examples of the classical suite of dances. Such suites generally ended with a gavotte, which seems then to have been regarded as a species of branle.

Some aristocratic branles included pantomime elements, such the branle de Poitou, the possible ancestor of the minuet, which acts out gestures of courtship. Some of these dances were reserved for specific age groups - the branle de Bourgogne, for instance, for the youngest dancers. Branle music is generally in common time somewhat like the gavotte, though some variants, like that of Poitou, are in triple time (Scholes 1970). Branles were danced walking, running, gliding, or skipping depending on the speed of the music. (Enc.Brit 2016) Among the dance's courtly relations may be the basse danse and the passepied (Scholes 1970) which latter, though it is in triple time, Rabelais and Thoinot Arbeau (1589) identify as a type of Breton branle.

The branle in Arbeau

The first detailed sources for the dance's steps are found in Arbeau's famous text-book Orchesography. Antonius de Arena briefly describes the steps for the double and single branle (Arena 1986 [1529], 20–21), and John Marston's The Malcontent (1604) sketches the choreography of one type. According to Arbeau (1967, ), every ball began with the same four branles: the double, the single, the gay and the Burgundian branle. The double branle had a simple form involving two phrases of two bars each.

Arbeau gives choreographies for eight branles associated with specific regions; the Burgundian (see above) or Champagne, the Haut Barrois, the Montardon, the Poitou, the Maltese, the Scottish and the Trihory of Brittany; he also mentions four others without describing their steps; the branles of Camp, Hainaut, Avignon, and Lyon (Arbeau 1967, 135–36, 146–53, 163, 167–69). Most of these dances seem to have a genuine connection to the region: the Trihory of Brittany, Arbeau says, was seldom if ever performed around Langres where his book was published, but "I learned it long ago from a young Breton who was a fellow student of mine at Poitiers" (Arbeau 1967, 151).

On the other hand, Arbeau identifies some branles as adapted to ballet and mime. When his student Capriol asks whether the Maltese branle is native to Malta, rather than just "a fanciful invention for a ballet", Arbeau replies that he "cannot believe it to be other than a ballet" (Arbeau 1967, 153). He also describes a "Hermit" branle based upon mime.

The suite of branles

There were several well-established branle suites of up to ten dances; the Branles de Champagne, the Branles de Camp, the Branles de Hainaut and the Branles d'Avignon. Arbeau named these suites branles coupés, which literally means "cut" or "intersected" branles but is usually translated as "mixed branles" (Arbeau 1967, 137 and 203 n93). Antonius de Arena mentions mixed branles (branlos decopatos) in his macaronic treatise Ad suos compagnones (Arena 1986 [1529], 20–21),

By 1623 such suites had been standardized into a set of six dances: premier bransle, bransle gay, bransle de Poictou (also called branle à mener), bransle double de Poictou, cinquiesme bransle (by 1636 named branle de Montirandé), and a concluding gavotte (Semmens 1997, 36). A variant is found in the Tablature de mandore (Paris, 1629) by François, Sieur de Chancy. A suite of seven dances collectively titled Branles de Boccan begins with a branle du Baucane, composed by the dancing master and violinist Jacques Cordier, known as "Bocan", followed by a second, untitled branle then the branle gay, branle de Poictu, branle double de Poictu, branle de Montirandé and la gavotte (Tyler 1981, 26).

The fame of the branle

In the late 16th century in England the branle was mentioned by Shakespeare (Love's Labour's Lost, 3. 1. 7: "Will you win your love with a French brawl?"). In the 17th century it was danced at the courts of Louis XIV of France and Charles II of England, where it became "even more common than in France" (Scholes 1970). There are even a few late examples in Beauchamp-Feuillet notation (invented in 1691), such as Danses nouvelles presentees au Roy (c. 1715) by Louis-Guillaume Pécour.

In Italy the branle became the brando, and in Spain the bran (Dolmetsch 1959, ). The Branle seems to have travelled to Scotland and survived for some time as the brail. Emmanuel Adriaenssen includes a piece called Branle Englese in his book of lute music, Pratum Musicum (1584) and Thomas Tomkins' Worster Braules is included in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. But of thousands of lute pieces from England only 18 were called branle, though one called "courant" is known from continental sources as a branle (Craig-McFeely 1994, chapter 2, note 22).

Branles not choreographed by Arbeau

The Branle de Montirandé appears to be related to the Haut Barrois branle, which Arbeau says was "arranged to the tune of a branle of Montierandal" (probably Montier-en-Der, near Chaumont in the Haute Marne) (Arbeau 1967, 136 and 203 n92). This is danced in duple time, and as described by Arbeau has a similar structure to the double branle. Settings for this appear in the lute anthology Le trésor d'Orphée by Anthoine Francisque (1600) and the ensemble collection Terpsichore by Michael Praetorius (1612).

In John Marston's The Malcontent (1604), act 4, scene 2, the character Guerrino describes the steps of a dance called Beanchaes brawl (Bianca's branle):

t'is but two singles on the left, two on the right, three doubles forward, a trauerse of six round: do this twice, three singles side, galliard tricke of twentie, curranto pace; a figure of eight, three singles broken downe, come vp, meete two doubles, fall backe, and then honour.

The opening is the same as the Maltese branle described by Arbeau, but starting with "three singles side", there is an interpolation of "something presumably more athletic". The male dancer moves away from his partner before performing a "galliard trick of twenty"—apparently a number of capers or leaps in the manner of the galliard—before returning to the conventional ending (Marston 1999, 107, editor's note).

Revivals

Francis Poulenc includes a Bransle de Champagne and a Bransle de Bourgogne in his Suite Française (1935).
Igor Stravinsky includes a Bransle Simple, Bransle Gay, and Bransle de Poitou (Double) in his Agon (1957).
The air of Arbeau's "Branle de l'Official" was adapted for the 20th-century English Christmas carol "Ding Dong Merrily on High".

References

Arbeau, Thoinot (1967). Orchesography, translated by Mary Stewart Evans, with a new introduction and notes by Julia Sutton and a new Labanotation section by Mireille Backer and Julia Sutton. American Musicological Society Reprint Series. New York: Dover Publications, 1967. ISBN 0-486-21745-0; ISBN 978-0-486-21745-1.
Arena, Antonius (1986 [1529]) "Rules of Dancing", translated by John Guthrie and Marino Zorzi. Dance Research 4, no. 2 (Autumn): 3–53.
Craig-McFeely, Julia (1994). "English Lute Manuscripts and Scribes 1530–1630". Thesis. Oxford University.
Dolmetsch, Mabel (1959). Dances of England and France, from 1450 to 1600, with Their Music and Authentic Manner of Performance (2nd ed.). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Reprinted New York: Da Capo Press, 1975. ISBN 978-0-306-70725-4.
Encyclopedia Britannica (2016) .
Expert, Henry (1894–1908). Les maîtres musiciens de la renaissance française, éditions publiées par m. Henry Expert. Sur les manuscrits les plus authentiques et les meilleurs imprimés du XVIe siècle, avec variantes, notes historiques et critiques, transcriptions en notation moderne, etc. 23 volumes. Paris: Alphonse Leduc. Volume 23: Danceries. Facsimile reprint, New York: Broude Brothers, 1952–64. ISBN 0-8450-1200-2 (set).
Heartz, Daniel (2001). "Branle [brande, brawl, brall, brangill]". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, 29 volumes, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, 4:242–45. London: Macmillan Publishers. ISBN 978-1-56159-239-5.
Library of Congress (n.d.). "Renaissance Dance". American Memory site (Accessed 30 January 2011).
Marston, John (1999). The Malcontent, edited by George K. Hunter, with a new introduction, together with a revised reading text and commentary notes. Revels Plays. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-3094-3.
Marston, John, and John Webster (1604). The Malcontent. Augmented by Marston. With the Additions Played by the Kings Maiesties Servants. Written by Ihon Webster. London: Printed by V. S. for William Aspley.
Scholes, Percy A. (1970). "Branle". The Oxford Companion to Music, tenth, revised and rest edition, edited by John Owen Ward. London and New York: Oxford University Press.
Semmens, Richard T. (1997). "Branles, Gavottes and Contredanses in the Later Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries". Dance Research 15, no. 2 (Winter): 35–62.
Tyler, James (1981). "The Mandore in the 16th and 17th Centuries". Early Music 9, no. 1 (January: Plucked-String Issue 1): 22–31.
Anon. "Branle". Encyclopaedia Britannica Online

External links

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