Les Nuits de Paris. In praise of dansomanie

An anonymous popular expression apparently dating from the eighteenth century asserts that ‘the Italians sing, the Germans pray, and the French dance’. Although one is disinclined to comment on how accurate this judgment is, it certainly does not exaggerate the French taste for the art of choreography. The Romantic age pushed this ‘dance mania’ (Dansomanie was the title of a ballet by Méhul premiered in 1800) even further, and the discipline soon contaminated every milieu, even church music, which, although it lacked ballerinas, did not hesitate to exploit passacaglia, minuet, round-dance and even bolero rhythms in large-scale compositions with secular overtones. Hence there can be no question of simplistically dividing this repertory into two distinct groups, one that was composed by convention for a theatre possessing a corps de ballet, and another whose role was to accompany public dancing at balls. On the contrary, there was constant permeability between the different performance venues, since operatic hits were systematically adapted into waltzes or quadrilles by dance-band leaders, while operatic composers frequently attempted to recreate on stage the atmosphere of elite or popular social dances. Moreover, ballet music was an ideal candidate for appropriation by symphony concerts: even though, quantitatively speaking – in comparison with the Germans – the French had difficulty in composing specifically orchestral pieces, the repertory of the symphonic associations needed to be renewed and nourished. Consequently, concert promoters had no scruples about extracting ballets from operas, sometimes in their entirety, or reducing them to around twenty minutes – the length of a Classical symphony – under the title ‘orchestral suite’. The result was a somewhat unusual musical object: dance music to be listened to while seated.