Beauchamp-Feuillet notation

Notation for bar of a French courante by Judith Appleby

Beauchamp–Feuillet notation is a system of dance notation used in Baroque dance.

File:Page 1 of the dance la Bouree d'Achille published in 1700 by Feuillet.jpg

eight bars of a dance recorded and published by Feuillet in 1700

The notation was commissioned by Louis XIV (who had founded the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661), and devised in the 1680s by Pierre Beauchamp. It was published in 1700 by Raoul-Auger Feuillet, who began a programme of publishing notated dances. It was used to record dances for the stage and domestic use throughout the eighteenth century, being modified by Pierre Rameau in 1725, and surviving into at least the 1780s in various modified forms.

Reading

• Raoul Auger Feuillet (1700) Chorégraphie, ou l'art de d'écrire la danse (Paris)
  • a facsimile of the 1700 Paris edition (1968: Broude Brothers)
  • translated John Weaver: (1706) Orchesography (London)
• Raoul Auger Feuillet (1706) Recueil de contredanses (Paris)
  • a facsimile of the 1706 Paris edition (1968: Broude Brothers)
• Wendy Hilton “Dance of court and theater: the French noble style 1690–1725”
  • reprinted in: (1997) Dance and Music of Court and Theater: Selected Writings of Wendy Hilton (Pendragon Press) ISBN 0-945193-98-X
• Meredith Ellis Little & Carol G. Marsh (1992) La Danse Noble: An Inventory of Dances and Sources (Broude Brothers) ISBN 0-8450-0092-6
• Pierre Rameau (1725) Le Maître à danser (Paris)
  • a facsimile of the 1725 Paris edition (1967: Broude Brothers)
  • translated John Essex: (1728) The Dancing Master (London)
• Pierre Rameau (1725) Abbregé de la nouvelle methode (Paris)
• Kellom Tomlinson (1735) The Art of Dancing (London)
• Philippa Waite & Judith Appleby (2003) Beauchamp–Feuillet Notation: A Guide for Beginner and Internediate Baroque Dance Students (Cardiff:Consort de Danse Baroque) ISBN 0-9544423-0-X

External links

• Wilson, David. The Early Dance Lecture 2003: But how do you know how they danced so long ago? at the Wayback Machine (archived February 16, 2012)
• The books of John Weaver - Facsimiles of 18th-century English translations of Feuillet's books.
• Baroque Dance Notation by Paige Whitley-Bauguess, including an introduction to reading Beauchamp-Feuillet notation.