Jonathan's slightly less boring-but-useful site

The maxixe was a lower-class dance that caused outrage in upper and middle class society in late 19th century Brazil. Not only did partners hold each other by the buttocks, but – horror of horrors – white women danced with black partners. Nonetheless, the music became very popular in all levels of society.

But you couldn’t, as a respectable lady, go into your local music shop and ask for the sheet music of the latest maxixe, so many composers (falsely) titled their music Tango or Tango Brasileira.

Musically, the maxixe was a fusion of the European polka with Afro-Brazilian rhythms such as the habañera rhythm found in tango or milonga.

As I already mentioned in my Tico-Tico post, we often call things rumbas which are more rightly choro, which in turn comprises the maxixe which is a Brazilian version of the polka. And as you see in this post, that dance was sometimes euphemistically called a tango.

Perhaps you can see now why I won’t be drawn into the ‘what’s the difference between a tango and a habañera’ debate, because the question is founded on false dichotomy in the first place!

As many times before, my source for this stuff is Choro: a social history of a Brazilian popular music by Livingston-Isenhour & Garcia, relevant sections below if you’re in a browser that can view embedded Google books.

Here’s a nice Christmas ‘spot the difference’ quiz: listen to the music of the two clips below and see how many differences (apart from tempo) you can identify.  Corella’s is the original, Nureyev’s is Lanchbery’s re-orchestration – and is it turns out, a bit more than orchestration.  Until last year, I had never heard the first version. My thanks, as always, to the terrific Adam Lopez for helping to sort out this conundrum and point me to the relevant sources.

Clip 1: Angel Corella dancing the Corsaire pas de deux solo

Clip 2: Nureyev dancing the Corsaire pas de deux solo.

…sometimes.

For many people, especially dance teachers, ‘hornpipe’ is synonomous with 2/4 time. But there is another hornpipe in 3/2, particularly common in English baroque music, an example being Purcell’s Hole in the Wall (see below). Another example is the Scottish tune ‘Dance to your Daddy‘, the rondeau from Purcell’s Abdelazer that’s used in Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra or the hornpipe from Handel’s Water Music. What those last three tunes have in common is that until about a year ago, I had never realised they were in three  – I hadn’t ever considered what their metre was, because in fact, metre in the sense of regular grouping accents doesn’t seem to emerge from those tunes – they just seemed to me  to flow as melodies without sensing that they’re in 3  or 2 – or anything in fact.  I sometimes wonder why I would teach people to try and perceive patterns in music that I don’t perceive myself, even with my musical training. I’m afraid I have no answer to that yet.

The Hole in the Wall

And the water music hornpipe:

• A wonderful collection of links to hornpipes in 2 and 3 from a site about English & French folk music.