The Colonial Music Institute^(tm)
Bringing History to Life Through Music

The Dancing Master, 1651-1728: An Illustrated Compendium
A Data Base of Images and Indexes
by Robert M. Keller
Annapolis, MD: The Colonial Music Institute, 2000
*DM-cdr:  $35.00

System requirements: Windows 95®, or Mac OS 7.6® plus MRJ 2.0, CD-ROM drive, Netscape 4™ or Internet Explorer™
 

Database is also on the web at http://www.izaak.unh.edu/nhltmd/indexes/dancingmaster/

This database contains indexes, images, and figure descriptions of all the country dances, tunes, and songs in The Dancing Master published by John and Henry Playford and John Young in London from 1651 to 1728. It lists all the 6,217 dances published (including duplications, 186 tunes without figures, and three songs) and contains facsimiles of 1,053 individual dances or tunes, as distinguished by their combination of title, music, and dance figures.
        For this publication every dance was reduced to a code, enabling comparison with similar dances. The unique or “Ur” dances were identified and collected into a database where each dance’s printing history and other information is summarized and a facsimile of the dance and its music is included. The Index presents every item by title with links to the Urdance Index. The Title/Link takes the reader to a bibliography of the sources. Searches can be made on all text entries as well as on the dance coding to find instances of specific dance figures in juxtaposition with others.
        This CD-ROM was published by The Dolmetsch Historical Dance Society in cooperation with The Colonial Music Institute on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the publication of John Playford’s The English Dancing Master (1651). It is published with cooperation from the English Folk Dance and Song Society, the University of Glasgow, the British Library, the Library of Congress, the University of New Hampshire and the Country Dance and Song Society who gave permission to include images from editions of The Dancing Master in their collections.