bassadanza and in French as basse danse. The English equivalent would be “low dance,” the adjective
referring to the dignified gliding steps—low and close to the floor—that the noble ballroom dancers
employed. The lower the steps, one might say, the higher the social rank of the dance. Peasant dances—
oftentimes mimicked by the nobility for their fun and games—were the ones for leaping and prancing.
The appearance of the music in the early bassadanza collections was strange, and for a long time it
succeeded in misleading historians. It consisted of long strings of unaccompanied square notes that looked
for all the world like Gregorian chant, arranged over weird strings of letters (Fig. 15-8). Comparison
with a few scattered polyphonic bassadanza settings finally cracked the code: what the collection
contained were bass lines (or rather, in contemporary parlance, tenors) over which musicians trained in
the specialized art of dance accompaniment improvised discant by ear. (The letters under the notes in
some sources represented the dance steps.)
FIG. 15-8 Il re d’Espagna, from Michel de Toulouze, L’art et instruction de bien dancer (Paris, 1496); here it is titled “Casulle la
novele” (“New Castile”).
Although an unwritten practice, this sort of ensemble improvisation by reed and brass instruments was
a high art indeed. The standard ensemble, as depicted in Fig. 15-9, was a trio consisting of a pair of
shawms (early oboes) and a slide trumpet or trombone. This little band was called the alta capella, a
term that (confusingly enough) means “high ensemble,” even though it was used exclusively for
accompanying “low” dancing. (As usual, there is less paradox here than meets the eye: when applied to
instruments, the terms “high” and “low”—alta/bassa in Italian, haut/basse in French—distinguished loud
from soft; the alta capella was thus a “loud” ensemble.) “Alta” musicians formed something of a guild and
treasured their techniques as guild secrets; no wonder there is no written source of instruction in their
craft. It was passed along for generations by “word of mouth”—by example and emulation. As far as we
are concerned, it is irrecoverably submerged in that unheard and unhearable “iceberg.” We don’t have any
theoretical guide to it; all we have are a few written specimens (or imitations) of the practice, few of
them actual dances.
If not dances, then what? Carmina, bicinia, lute intabulations—even Masses! From these chance
survivors we know that the most popular bassadanza tenor of all (the one shown in Fig. 15-8) was
traditionally called Il re d’Espagna (“The King of Spain”) or simply La Spagna. That may even be why
Ortiz, a Spaniard working abroad, selected it for his specimen improvisations. But long before Ortiz,
Henricus Isaac had taken it into his head to flatter and amuse his bassadanza-loving patron, the
magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici of Florence, with a Mass built over the Spagna tenor as cantus firmus.