Oh, thanks Richard! Now we'll have to figure out what the heck "confitures" (confections, candies, jams, etc) have to do with a quadrille! Big dogs weren't bad enough! Alec MacLean
-----Original Message----- From: Richard Shuttleworth <rshuttlewo...@sympatico.ca> To: nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu; bri...@aol.com Sent: Thu, Jul 8, 2010 2:25 pm Subject: [NSP] Re: la Grande Chaine Hi Sheila, Being neither a dancer nor a fiddler, I hesitate to answer your question. Having made that disclaimer I will jump in with both feet. Many Quebec traditional dances are in the form of a quadrille and are made up of several parts. The Grande Chaîne is one such part. For example, the Quadrille de Rimouski is made up of six parts: la Chaîne, le Changement de compagnie, le Salut par le main, la Grand Chaîne, la Galope and finally les Confitures. The tune we know as The Grand Chain is the tune that is played to the 4th part of the dance. The tunes played to the other parts of the dance also take the name of their particular part. In case anyone is impressed by this show of knowledge, all this information comes from a book entitled "La Dance traditionnelle dans l'est du Québec" written by Simonne Voyer and published by l'Université Laval. Our tune The Grand Chain appears in a recognizable form on page 275 as l'air de quadrille (4ième partie): La Grande Chaîne. When did it become popular? I've no idea but it is still being danced today. Cheers, Richard ps Sheila, you haven't registered for the Pipers' Gathering yet - are we going to have the pleasure of your company this year? www.pipersgathering.org ----- Original Message ----- From: <bri...@aol.com> To: <nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu>; <bri...@aol.com> Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2010 4:23 PM Subject: [NSP] la Grande Chaine > > La Grande Chaine seems to be a very popular tune on both east and west > > sides of the Atlantic, so I was most surprised, when looking through "The > > Fiddler's Fake Book" , published in 1983, which lists almost 500 of the > > most played tunes, not to find it there. Does anyone have any idea when > it > became popular? Richard, living in Quebec, maybe you can throw some > light > on this? I had always assumed that it was an old, very > traditionally French > Canadian. > > Sheila > > > > > -- > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > --
