Vitalizing Music History Teaching

Jeanne Halley
A Mysterious Lacuna: Reconsidering the Exclusion
of French Baroque Music and Dance from the Curricula

Image 2

How do we know the choreography for Baroque dances?

Luckily, several systems of dance notation were being developed in France during the 1680s and a limited number of ballroom, theatre, and country dances were preserved in publications and manuscripts. Compare the examples of the three notation systems shown side by side below.

Favier Notation

Lorin Notation

Beauchamps-Feuillet Notation
Favier notation lorin notation feuillet notation

Favier Notation
jeté onto the right

Lorin Notation
jeté onto the left, jeté onto the right

Beauchamps-Feuillet Notation
jeté onto the right

favier jete
lorin jete
 feuillet jete

A comparison of "Chor�graphie" with the most popular French dance manuals of the period
Courtesy of Baroquedance.com
Public domain

Back to Table of Contents

Back to Halley Image List