Court Dance Music
tagStarted 1450Peak 1550–1720Last big hit 1750
Located in 1 route
Court dance music is rhythmically explicit, phrase-squared, and socially coded, with each dance type carrying distinct tempo, accent, and bearing. Ensembles may be spare or festive, but the idiom values elegant articulation, repeat structure, and polished physicality over large symphonic development.
History
It evolved in European courts long before public concert culture matured, supplying pavanes, galliards, branles, allemandes, courantes, sarabandes, gigues, and other forms for ceremony, etiquette, and display; dance treatises and instrumental collections codified the repertory, and later composers stylized these dances into suites that preserved courtly movement after the social practice itself changed.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Oxford Music Online
- Grove Music Online
- early dance and court music notes from Harmonia Mundi and Hyperion