The Melody Web what each genre heard, and what it passed on

heard passed on Click or tap a node to recenter. Use a connecting line, or Influence, for the story.

Heard

Italian intermedio form · 1480–1600

Beaujoyeulx and other Italian festival workers bring the intermedio job to Paris: allegory, machines, sung wonders between (or instead of) a play.

Influence
Renaissance court dance practice · 1450–1600

French ballet de cour is still a night of courtiers who already know pavane, gaillarde, and branle.

Influence

Ballet de cour

form · 1580–1670

Also called court ballet

Italian and French court ballet of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: masque-like spectacle, noble dancers, poetry, and a pit. It hears Italian intermedio for the machine-night and Renaissance court dance for the counted noble body. Louis XIV’s Ballet de la Nuit (1653) is the emblem. The 1661 Académie and later Academic ballet professionalize this court body into a school. It already gives Baroque the French dance-theatre job Lully recodes. Masque leftover as an English sibling spectacle, not a parent. Air de cour leftover as court song on this node, not a second parent. Comédie-ballet and tragédie en musique leftover as Baroque vehicles on Baroque. It is not Romantic Giselle and not Escuela bolera.

Listen

  1. Ballet Comique de la Reine Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx (1581) YouTube
  2. Le Ballet de la Nuit Jean de Cambefort / court of Louis XIV (1653) YouTube
  3. Ballet de la Merlaison Louis XIII court (1635) YouTube
  4. Il ballo delle ingrate Claudio Monteverdi (1608) YouTube · Amazon
  5. Le Ballet des Fées de la forêt de Saint-Germain French court ballet (1625) YouTube

Passed on

Academic ballet tradition · 1700–

The 1661 Académie Royale de Danse turns court ballet into a school: turnout, named steps, frontal presentation, pit-counted phrase.

Influence
Baroque style · 1600–1750

French Baroque takes ballet de cour’s dance meters, divertissement, and royal-stage job into Lully’s tragédie en musique and the French suite.

Influence

Italian intermedio → Ballet de cour

form and structurefunction and contextperformance practiceinstrumentationstrength: highscholarly consensus1570–1610patronagemigrationpedagogynotation

Mechanism

Beaujoyeulx and other Italian festival workers bring the intermedio job to Paris: allegory, machines, sung wonders between (or instead of) a play. The French night makes dance the continuous spine. Strength high for spectacle and political floor. The counted noble step is the other incoming edge (Renaissance court dance).

Evidence

Ballet Comique de la Reine (1581); Grove on ballet de cour as an Italianizing French form; 1589 Pellegrina as the Italian object being recoded.

Debate

English masque is a sibling, not a parent. Early opera (Peri, Caccini) is a parallel exit from the same Florentine world, not this hop. Do not treat Giselle as hearing intermedi.

Mediators

artist: Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx; institution: Valois and early Bourbon court

Renaissance court dance → Ballet de cour

performance practicemeter and grooveform and structurefunction and contextstrength: highscholarly consensus1570–1650dancepedagogypatronagenotation

Mechanism

French ballet de cour is still a night of courtiers who already know pavane, gaillarde, and branle. The gift is the counted noble phrase and the dancing-master’s named step. Strength high for the body. Machines and Olympus are the intermedio hop, not this one.

Evidence

Arbeau (1588) as the French manual sitting next to the first ballets; entrée structure built from social-dance meters; Grove on ballet de cour as danced spectacle, not as a play with incidental steps.

Debate

Fifteenth-century Italian ballo is inside this donor node, not a second parent. The 1661 académie is the child of ballet de cour, not a parent of it.

Mediators

community: French and Italian court dancing-masters

Ballet de cour → Academic ballet

performance practicefunction and contextform and structurestrength: highscholarly consensus1661–1713patronagepedagogynotation

Mechanism

The 1661 Académie Royale de Danse turns court ballet into a school: turnout, named steps, frontal presentation, pit-counted phrase. The gift is the trained stage body. Strength high. Romantic Giselle is a later public face of that school, not a second parent.

Evidence

Ballet de la Nuit (1653) as the court climax; the Académie as the institutional hop; Noverre and the Romantic repertory as the later theatre form already listed on the target.

Debate

Italian intermedio and Renaissance court dance are parents of ballet de cour, not of this académie hop. Do not treat 1661 as the invention of dancing; it is the professionalization of the court habit.

Mediators

institution: Académie Royale de Danse; artist: Louis XIV

Ballet de cour → Baroque

form and structurefunction and contextmeter and groovestrength: mediumscholarly consensus1653–1673dancepatronagenotation

Mechanism

French Baroque takes ballet de cour’s dance meters, divertissement, and royal-stage job into Lully’s tragédie en musique and the French suite. Strength medium. italian intermedio baroque is the Italian spectacular parent of opera; this hop is the French dance-theatre parent. Academic ballet leftover as the later training child of the same court floor.

Evidence

Ballet de la Nuit (1653) and Lully’s court years; dance types in French overture and suite; Bukofzer and Grove on the ballet-to-opera recoding.

Debate

Whether French Baroque is only Italian opera in Paris. The dance-and-divertissement grammar is ballet de cour’s, not Monteverdi’s.

Mediators

artist: Jean-Baptiste Lully; institution: court of Louis XIV