R.-A. Feuillet. Three dance works, 1709-1713

Raoul-Auger Feuillet

Three dance works

Chorégraphie ou l'art de d'écrire la dance par caracteres, figures et signes desmonstratifs...Par M.^rs Feuillet et Dezais Maitres de Dances [RISM Écrits, p.314], Paris: Chez Dezais, 1713, 3 leaves, 95 pages, engraved throughout, dance notation and text

Recueil de dances, Paris: Chez l'Auteur, 1709, 1 leaf, 84 pages, including 8 folding pages, engraved music with dance notation

Recueil de dances composées par M. Pécour...et mise sur le papier par M. Feuillet [RISM P 1129], Paris, Chez l'Auteur, 1709, 1 leaf, 72 pages, engraved music with dance notation

3 volumes in one, 8vo (22.6 x 15.7cm), Dolmetsch Library stamps and pencil shelfmarks ("II B 20"), nineteenth-century polished calf, gilt lettering to spine ("Feuillet et Dezais, Chorégraphie"), small tear with paper loss to lower outer corner of pp.67/68 of first volume and pp.9/10 of second volume, some leaves strengthened, cropped in places, slightly affecting engraved surface, a few small stains, covers rubbed

A fine volume containing later editions of three important dance works by the French dancing-master and choreographer Raoul-Auger Feuillet (1659-60 to 1710). All editions of his works are rare at auction.

The 'daddy' of all these works was Feuillet's famous Chorégraphie of 1700, the origin of eighteenth-century dance notation. The later version of it here was produced three years after Feuillet's death, in 1713. The second and third works in the volume were also originally published in 1700 - a collection containing 15 of Feuillet's own dances and another with 9 dances and dance suites by Feuillet's great contemporary Louis Guillaume Pécour.

Unlike previous choreographical methods, which only described dance steps verbally, Feuillet's is a visual representation, using flowing diagrams ('track notation') to show the turns, leaps and slides of the dancer and his movements across the dance floor. Feuillet's distinctive and highly attractive engravings include the appropriate dance tunes at the top of each plate. Not the least importance of Feuillet's system is that it allows us today to reconstruct, with a little help from the verbal descriptions of contemporary writers, the dances of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; it was also a major factor in confirming France's pre-eminence in the world of ballet.

PROVENANCE:

From the collection of Arnold Dolmetsch