The Cotillion barndance

This is a fine tune that’s been doing the rounds of local sessions for a while.

It’s only recently we’ve begun learning it, as the sheet music’s been difficult to obtain.

Apparently traditional English & popularised by the Bosham Band in the 1890’s

Another nice arrangement here http://ftp.pwp.att.net/j/o/joe-offer/Cotillion.mid

Here’s the version I can here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ijCAbf2noY -- it’s got some notably different ornaments and differences in the tune, so I figured it was worth a different setting.

play video

The Cotillion is a type of dance, originally from France. It was predecessor to the Quadrille which overtook it in popularity in the mid 1800s.

This setting is as arranged by The Rude Mechanicals, Sussex, UK - not the other Rude Mechanicals. (Melody lines 1- 4, harmony part lines 5 - 8 in the sheet music). See: www.rudemex.co.uk for this and other material. The Cotillion is well known in Sussex sessions, and is the first tune in the ‘Lewes Favourites, Vol 1’ collection.

@andy very true. I’ve danced cotillions -- which IIRC (I might have gotten it backwards after a few years, but I don’t think so) include a unique step sequence to the B part of the tune, but have a fixed set of around 11 different step sequences for the A part of the tune. Dance historian Susan de Guardiola has reconstructed and taught several cotillions.

@Bazza, can you edit your x:3 to use [v: 2] to have the second voice be in line? (or maybe repeat your melody without the chords in line with the harmony line; the way the midi renders I think it would be pretty awful with the chords and the melody -and- the harmony line) That way it’s clearer as what it is without looking at the comment.

e.g.

[v: 1] G4 d4 |B2 AB G2 AB |c2 B2 A2 G2 |FGAF D3 D |E4 F4 |
[v: 2] B3 B B3 A |G2 FG E2 FG |A2 GE F2 E2 |D2 d2 cAFA |G2 C2 A2 D2 |

mnemex:- regrettably, I don’t know how to edit the .abc file in the way you suggest (though I agree it would be helpful). I just work with music notation, which is rendered into abc by a colleague, but I’ll ask him if he can do as you suggest. Of course, if any other site user with abc expertise can do the job, please feel free.

X:3 - edited version laid out as requested. Hope o.k.

That works, though coding in the chords makes it sound very busy (thus my suggestion that you have the melody + chords a first rep and then the one with the harmony and no chords for that part) when played as midi. The sheet music looks great except for that stray C chord on the harmony line at the end, though.

mnemex:- I’ve never played a Sessions.org tune file as midi, so I can’t comment on what it sounds like when you do so with this arrangement. As to the placing of that stray C chord . . . not sure how that came about*, but I gather my colleague did have a certain amount of trouble getting the .abc version of our .pdf file to marry up with the way the coding works on this site, hence a number of attempts to get the layout looking right. For example, it proved impossible to place all the chords in between the staves, which is where we put them in the MSS.
* In our written arr’t, the last bar ends with a G-C-G sequence: a bit hymnal, I know, but it seems to fit.