Origin of the Waltz.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 18, 29 April 1908, Page 65

Origin of the Waltz.

Of all the millions who waltz, who can tell how this famous dance originated? The story is a curious one. It is wrongly supposed that France received the waltz from Germany toward the close of Jhe eighteenth century. The waltz did not emanate in its present form from the brain of a dancing master. Long before 1780• the time it is first mentioned under this name, it was displayed on the village greens. The waltz was first danced m the church, and serves to trace the union between ancient civilisation and that of the Middle Ages. The sacred dance of the pagans is pre served to a certain extent in Christian rites. It is transformed to a series of revolutions made to the sound of the tambourine. St. Isadore, Archbishop ot •Seville, born about A.D. 580, was entrusted with the council of Toledo with the revision of the liturgy as it was then practised in the .Roman Church, in which there was a tambourine dance. The council decidled to adopt the Isa dorian liturgy in all Spain, and it differed but little from that used in other countries at that time. This rite, celebrated before the eighth century, when the Moors first invaded Spain, was still celebrated by the Christians in the seven churches of Toledo, which the Moors abandoned after their capture of the city, and it was after that time called the Moorish rite. This was known and employed in Provence and J Lily. The tambourine in use in this religious dance was called by St. Isad/»re “ moite de symphonic/’ and evidently corresponded to the instrument which in the. ancient sacred dances accompanied the flute, a sort of bagpipe invented two centuries before Child. As the religious dances of the Middle Ages is allied to the ancient sacred dance, so the waltz is an evolution of this religious dance, having passed through many changes before arriving in its present form. In the eleventh century, when the Gregorian rite supplanted the Moorish rite, the dance disappeared from the church. It apearedJ very quickly in >oui ety under the name of “ carole,” a word derived from the Latin “ caroler.” © © ©