The Ancient Dance-Forms

Extract

Being thoroughly cognizant that the title of this paper suggests a bulky volume rather than a slight historical sketch of the forms that constitute the foundation of music's shapeliness, the difficulty that immediately presents itself is to decide which sections of this important and fascinating subject ask for treatment first, and which of them could, without detracting from the completeness and coherency of the rest, be left for another occasion. My choice is the one that nine out of every ten musical historians would have made: it falls upon the forms of the earliest Suite or Partita, with a few words on their probable sources.