As a recorder player who also dabbles in percussion and at one time more-than-dabbled in dancing I’ve long been intrigued by the Orchesographie. Unlike collections of dances by Susato or Attaigngant it contains more than notes: there are long discourses on how to perform dance rhythms on percussion instruments, and compositions in the second half of the volume come with a detailed description of the dance steps. On a spare Saturday I decided to take some of these monophonic melodies and arrange them, while attempting to imagine the corresponding dance, and do justice to the latter in choice of tempo & density of notes. I hope performers will play this with dancing in mind, and use articulation and phrasing accordingly.

The order of movements in the recording is: 01-Air des Canaries; 02-Branle de l'Official; 03-Branle de la Montarde; 04-Morisques; 05-Pavane d'Espagne; 06-Branle des Chevaulx; 07-La Volte

About Orchesographie:
Thoinot Arbeau is the anagrammatic pen name of French cleric Jehan Tabourot (March 17, 1520 – July 23, 1595).  (from IMSLP): A dance manuscript written by Tabourot was published in 1589. This manual contains detailed instructions for numerous styles of dance (branle, galliard, pavane, tourdion), as well as short sections about military music, drumming, fifes, and marching, and a few details about dance forms such as Morris dance, the Canary (reputed to be dances from the Canary Islands), the Allemande, Courante, and Bassadance. This manual, Orchésographie (Orchesography), is a major source of information about Renaissance Dance. It also contains many dance tabulations in which extensive instructions for the steps are lined up next to the musical notes (though this is misrepresented in some modern editions), which was in its time a significant innovation in dance notation.