Did space permit, it would be interesting to study in detail the dances
of various epochs and countries, coloured, like the Love which
originated them, by national peculiarities—the Polish mazourka and
polonaise, the Spanish fandango, the Viennese waltz, the Parisian
cancan, etc. Suffice it to note the great difference between the dances
of a few generations ago and those of to-day, as shown most vividly in
the evolution of dance-music.
The earliest dance-tunes are vocal, and were sung by the (professional)
dancers themselves, in the days when the young were not yet allowed to
meet, converse, and flirt and dance. Subsequently, the transference of
dance-music to instruments played by others gave the dancers opportunity
to perform more complicated figures, and made it possible to converse.
But even as late as the eighteenth century dancing and dance-music were
characterised by a stately reserve, slowness, and pompous dignity which
showed at once that they had nothing to do with Romantic Love. It was
not the fiery, passionate youths who danced these solemnly stupid
minuets, gavottes, sarabandes, and allemandes, but the older folks,
whose perruques, and collars, and frills, and bloated clothes would not
have enabled them to execute rapid movements even if the warm blood of
youth had coursed in their veins.
How all this artificiality and snail-like pomp has been brushed away by
triumphant Romantic Love, which has secured for modern lovers the
privilege of dancing together before they are married and cease to care
for it! True, we still have the monotonous soporific quadrille, as if to
remind us of bygone times; but the true modern dance is the round dance,
which differs from the stately mediæval dance as a jolly rural picnic
does from a formal morning call.
The difference between the mediæval and the modern dance is thus
indicated by F. Bremer:—
“Peculiar to modern dance-music is the round dance, especially the
waltz; and it is in consequence warmer than the older dance-music, more
passionate in expression, in rhythm and modulation more sharply
accented. As its creator we must regard Carl Maria von Weber, who, in
his _Invitation to Dance_, struck the keynote through which
subsequently, in the music of Chopin, Lanner, Strauss, Musard, etc.,
utterance was given to the whole gamut of dreamy, languishing,
sentimental, ardent passion. The consequence was the displacement of the
stately, measured dances by impetuous, chivalrous forms; and in place of
the former naïve sentimentality and childish mirth, it is the _rapture
of Love_ that constitutes the spirit of modern dance-music.”
Not to speak of more primitive dance-tunes, what a difference there is
between the slow and dreary monotony of eighteenth century dances and a
Viennese waltz of to-day! The vast superiority of a Strauss waltz lies
in this—that it is no longer a mere rhythmic noise calculated to guide
the steps, and skips, and bows, and evolutions of the dancers, but _the
symphonic accompaniment to the first act in the drama of Romantic Love_.
It recognises the fact that Courtship is the prime object of the dance.
Hence, though still bound by the inevitable dance rhythm, Strauss is
ever trying to break loose from it, to secure that freedom and variety
of rhythm which is needed to give full utterance to passion. Note the
slow, pathetic introductions; the signs in the score indicating an
accelerated or retarded tempo when the waltz is played at a concert,
where the uniformity of ballroom movement is not called for; note what
subtle use he makes of all the other means of expressing amorous
feeling—the wide melodic intervals, the piquant, stirring harmonies, the
exquisitely melancholy flashes of instrumental colouring, alternating
with cheerful moments, showing a subtle psychologic art of translating
the Mixed Moods of Love into the language of tones.
In the waltzes, mazourkas, and polonaises of Chopin we see still more
strikingly that the true function of dance-music is amorous. Even as
Dante’s Love for Beatrice was too super-sensual, too ethereal for this
world, so Chopin’s dance-pieces are too subtle, too full of delicate
_nuances_ of _tempo_ and Love episodes, to be adapted to a ballroom with
ordinary mortals. Graceful fairies alone could dance a Chopin waltz;
mortals are too heavy, too clumsy. They can follow an amorous Chopin
waltz with the imagination alone, which is the abode of Romantic Love.
To a Strauss waltz a hundred couples may make love at once, hence he
writes for the orchestra; but Chopin wrote for the parlour piano,
because the feelings he utters are too deep to be realised by more than
two at a time—one who plays and one who listens, till their souls dance
together in an ecstatic embrace of Mutual Sympathy.