New Hampshire Old-Time Country Dance Web Site

Money Musk

The material in this section is based on two articles I wrote for the Seacoast Country Dance Newsletter. The first was published in March, 1988 under the name Some Thoughts About the Dances We are Dancing. The second was from August 2006 and was part of a report on Northern Week at Ashokan that summer. The material has been edited and expanded to fit together, update some of the ideas expressed, and to include some new material and ideas that I didn’t know about when I wrote the original articles. I start with material from the 1988 article.

As you read the article you can see more detail about the various versions of the dance I discuss in the sidebar.

The varied ideas about phrasing of Money Musk

A few months ago (from March 1988) when Steve Zakon was calling, he was asked if he would call Money Musk. Many bands, including Swallowtail and the Lamprey River Band don’t play the tune, so the dance isn’t called very frequently around here. Furthermore, very few triple-minor dances (in which every third couple is active) are called these days anyway. Thus, it was the first time Steve had called the dance. He did reasonably well, but he wasn’t sure of the phrasing, which surprised me. 2020 Note: To be fair, Steve hadn’t been calling all that long at the time, and although he had danced it the chestnuts weren’t being done very frequently in the Monadnock region at the time.

Before the next dance he called in the area, I decided to make sure I knew the phrasing so I could pass it on to him. Besides my memory of dancing it to Tod Whittemore on numerous occasions, as well as to other callers, I consulted a tape of Duke Miller calling the dance in Fitzwilliam several years ago (Duke being one of the people who made the dance very popular in the Monadnock region for many years). Sure enough, Steve was asked to call it again in Madbury this month, and I gave him a card with the phrasing I knew. As we were dancing, it felt just right to me, but I noticed strange facial expressions from Roger, who has undoubtedly danced it at least as much as I have. I talked to him afterwards, and it turns out that he used to dance it with a slightly different pattern with a few additional moves in the dance. [2020 Note: A number of years later I saw a similar response from Marianne Taylor. It turns out she also knew different phrasing for the dance.

This got me to think about the evolution of some of the dances we do over the years. Over the past century, the dances (and music) have evolved considerably. For example, if you went to a dance a hundred years ago (from 1988), most (if not all) of the contras would have been triple minor dances. In Prof. L. H. Elmwell’s Prompter’s Pocket Instruction Book published in 1892, it appears that all the dances were triple minor; he doesn’t even mention whether dances are triple or duple. [This book isn't very well known, but there are numerous books very much like it from that time period. I have it because I ended up inheriting a number of dance books from Guy Mann who used to call in Dover in the 1940s and 1950s.]

The transition from 32 to 24 bars of music

Getting back to Money Musk, for many years, it was danced to a 32‑bar version of the tune. That is not surprising, as the majority of dance tunes are of that length. However, at some point it changed to be danced to a 24‑bar version of the same tune. It’s not entirely clear when that happened. In the Northern Junket, Vol. 2 #11 (1951), Ralph said it happened about a hundred years earlier. In his An Elegant Collection of Contras and Squares (1984) he described it as happening in the 1870s. I’ve read that in some places it kept being danced to 32-bar music into the 1900s.

In any case, the same amount of dancing was compressed into 3/4 the amount of time. In part this was done by changing the forward and back figure to a very quick figure. In the Northern Junket in 1951 Ralph Page describes it as “take two short steps forward and two steps back”. Over time in New Hampshire that evolved into a balance forward and back in many places.

But that only accounts for eight beats (four for each “forward six”); there are 8 left to cut to bring it down to a 48-beat (24-bar) dance. The first four came out of the “go below one couple” which was cut from 8 beats to 4. The remaining beats came out of the final “three quarters around”, which was cut from 8 to 4 beats as well.

Most of the changes in the chestnuts over the years can probably be attributed to two basic factors. (1) There has been a general speeding up of dancing. This corresponds with a general speeding up of so many other aspects of our culture that it’s to be expected. Not only is the overall pace of life greater now, but where people used to come to dances at least in part to socialize and relax after many hours of hard physical labor, these days many people come to dances to get exercise after hours of working in an office. (2) People have on many occasions come up with variations with the intent of making dances more fun. Some of these have caught on to the point of largely replacing existing ways of doing a dance. We’ll see this more with Petronella.

Money Musk Musings

Before getting into some of the details, I thought I'd present some thoughts that have been generated about Money Musk.

A different idea

Ed Moody wrote an article in the Northern Junket, Vol. 10 #9 (July 1971) about Money Musk, tracing changes in the dance starting with the original The Reel of Sir Archibald Grant of Monie Musk. In asking how it had come to be shortened by 16 beats he suggested the following line of reasoning. Interestingly he described the change as happening about 40 years ago which would make it approximately 1930, considerably later than usually thought to have happened.

He described the kitchen junkets which were where dancing occurred prior to dancing in town halls. The kitchen was usually the biggest room in the house, although often long and narrow, so the best too dance in. Generally all the furniture would be cleared out and a fire made in the wood stove. A milking stool was set in the sink opposite the wood stove for the fiddler/caller to sit on. Because the room was long and narrow, that meant the dancers would have to pass close to the stove. But the stove would get pretty hot, so you wouldn’t want to stay close to it for long.

So rather than the usual graceful turns with outstretched arms, the turns would be done with the forearm vertical to take up less space. As a result it took fewer steps to get around, and people would get ahead of the music. The fiddler/caller therefore started calling the next figure sooner, eventually reaching the point where they would be calling the rights and lefts for the first B part, leaving a whole B part at the end no longer needed. Presumably rather than playing the tune AAB, at some point the C part was added in, and the tune went ABC, with the dance shortened to 24 measures.

Although there is a certain plausibility to this, it seems a bit far fetched as well. It appears to be presented seriously, but the apparently serious presentation of something implausible can be part of Yankee humor, so it’s hard to say. But it was amusing enough to be worth presenting here!

Go below one couple and forward six!

What follows is based on an article written in 2006 as part of a report on that year’s Northern Week at Ashokan. I wrote:

“One of the most enjoyable events was the New England Ball on Friday evening beginning at midnight, at which we did many of the old chestnuts - Petronella, Chorus Jig, Money Musk (for the second time of the week), Lady of the Lake, Lady Walpole's Reel, Gay Gordons, Varsouvienne, etc. Some were done with no calling or minimal calling, starting with just the top couple being active as Dudley often does it. Combine that with some of the best music imaginable and it was truly outstanding!”

But I had one complaint about the teaching and dancing of Money Musk, both there and at the previous Ralph Page Weekend. As we do it in New Hampshire, the calls after crossing over are “Go below one couple and forward six” which has always been taken as short for forward six and back. Then you turn three quarters and forward six again. Dancing to Ralph Page that generally meant two steps forward and two steps back. At sometime in New Hampshire we started dancing it as a balance forward and back, presumably because it was more fun. Dudley has attributed it to the music being played slower than in Boston I believe, leaving more time for footwork which at times has been fancier than most current balances. In Francestown in the 1980's everyone balanced forward and back together making seven discrete sounds. But it's always been forward and back.

But at Ashokan (and at the previous Ralph Page Weekend) it had been taught as go below one couple and balance to the right and to the left. The calls going back at least to the 1890 (see transcriptions in the sidebar) have been forward six. Those of us who knew the dance cringed when it was taught as side-to-side.

Now I am and was perfectly aware of the folk process and how things including dances often change over time. But this didn’t accomplish any of the usual purposes. It didn’t speed up the dance, and it didn’t make it more fun. I speculated: This is different; it appears to be either based on ignorance of the dance or (hopefully not) a simplification assuming dancers can't handle a balance forward and back. From 2020 I have to add that the side-to-side balance is so prevalent these days that I’m inclined to think that callers might just have been avoiding one more thing to teach in an already complicated dance. In any case, nearly 15 years later I still object!

Dance Timing. The tables above compare the actual dance calls. But generally the dance calls precede the figure; callers generally time the calls to end just as the figure begins. However, sometimes the calls and the figures occur simultaneously. That's particularly true with singing squares and with some of the chestnuts that many or most of the dancers already know. For example, in Money Musk the call "Go once and a half around" occurs at the beginning of the A part, just as you're supposed to be dancing the figure.

Thus, it can be difficult to figure out the timing of the figures from a transcription of actual calls if you don’t know the dance well. Therefore I include a table that shows the dance written out with the figures written in at the point in the music where danced, with the length of each figure given, much like the two 32-bar versions. Both Ralph and Dudley call them with the same timing so this table works for both callers. Again timing is in terms of beats; to convert to measures (bars), divide by 2.

Comparing these two 24-bar versions of the dance, the most striking thing to notice is how similar they are despite being over 50 years apart. In one sense that may not be surprising, as Ralph Page was one of Dudley’s most important influences as a caller. Nevertheless, the timing was identical, and many of the calls were as well; the differences that exist are mostly pretty minor.

There are certainly other callers whose calls are worded differently or even phrased a bit differently, but many or most of them time the actual figures the same as Ralph Page and Dudley Laufman. There are a few callers whose timing is different, but at least in New Hampshire it would be safe to say that this is how a large majority of dancers and callers know the dance.

A Look at How the Dance Changed & Stayed the Same

Now it’s time to look at how Money Musk changed when it switched from a 32-bar dance to a 24-bar dance.

The Music. The tune for the dance was originally a two-part tune with repetition of each eight-bar part for a total of 32 bars of music, much like most other dance tunes. When the dance was shortened to 24 bars, the music was altered. The repeats were dropped, and a third part was added.

The Dance Figures. The dance figures were unchanged other than that they were fit into less music so had to be danced faster.

Timing of the Figures. The timing of the figures changed considerably, in the process altering the character of the dance substantially. Here is a comparison of the amount of music allotted to each figure in the 32-bar and 24-bar versions of the dance.

Parts of the dance are unchanged in timing, and parts have been speeded up. Also, the location of various figures with respect to the musical phrase has been changed, in some cases producing dramatic differences in the feel of the dance.

The first part (once and a half around, below one couple) has decreased from 16 to 12 measures, enough to speed it up noticeably. The final figure of the opening portion of the dance (forward six) is now given half the time it was originally. It’s fairly difficult to do a full forward and back in four counts, and as a result many dancers now treat it as a balance which fits the allotted time better. Furthermore, whereas the figure used to start half way through A1, now it occurs at the end of the A part. Given that it’s treated as a balance, that figure is much more likely to occur at the beginning of a phrase than at the end, so many people find that confusing.

The first three quarters around is unchanged in its time allotment, and remains fairly leisurely. It’s common to back out all the way to place when making lines up and down the set, and even to back out further than where the lines might be expected to form. Those who can’t deal with a leisurely figure sometimes turn by the left one and a quarter times.

The next forward six now comes half way through the B part, and once again is a very quick figure. It’s followed by turning three quarters to place, which is a very rapid figure. One of the more distinctive parts of the dance is the leisurely three-quarters turn the first time and the rapid one the second time.

The dance ends with rights and lefts, which are unchanged from before.