Dance Music in an 19th century Nova Scotian Presbyterian parlour

For a start, 19th century regular church going Nova Scotia Presbyterians didn’t dance (and Martin Henry Dawson’s parents were literally pillars of Truro’s First Presbyterian, one of the mother churches of Canadian Presbyterian culture.)

But parlour music back then, even in the most Presbyterian Sabbath-keeping of Presbyterian families, was absolutely filled with lively folk tunes.

Just filtered and modulated and sprinkled, for flavour, throughout the works of eminently respectable composers.

Even in the works by the composers of the music used in the Sabbath Sunday religious music singalongs in the parlour of the Dawsons.

Sir Arthur Sullivan, Queen Victoria’s favourite composer, wrote highly respectable music that was also frequently lively in a manner that could only be described as folkish.

What, however, did survive when folk dance tunes were briefly quoted and extensively adapted by what we now call today “classical” composers ?

Above all, it was the unique patterning of accents, which when combined with  their tempo, melodic contour and articulation, was what allowed anyone : folk or classical musician or dancer at contredanses to tell one dance type from another.

At least a hundred different dance rhythms, some dating back to the middle ages, could be heard in middle class parlours in 19th century Nova Scotia while in the most remote rural, folk, parts of Nova Scotia, up in the back hill wilds of Inverness, maybe only 6 different dance types might be actually danced to.

So urban middle class homes in 19th century Nova Scotia actually heard far more ‘folk’ music in one sense of the word (the sense that the folk collectors’ world might use) than did rural working class Nova Scotians who were actively involved in the ‘folk process’ of taking urban composed tunes and rendering them the common property of all....