France: The Quadrille



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The quadrille is a ballroom dance for four to eight couples, based on the contredanse. Originally a rural dance dating from the 18th century, the quadrille entered the urban scene in the early 19th century. It functioned for a time as a slow, stately court dance, then was taken up by urban socialites outside the court. Quadrille tunes were often taken from popular melodies of the day, played in duple time and placed in regular 8- or 16-measure cycles. The accordion, which appeared in Europe at the beginning of the 19th century, was viewed as a desirable ballroom instrument because of its particular sound qualities. In the 1970s a revival of diatonic accordion music took place, exemplified in this excerpt by Emmanuel Pariselle and Christian Maes.