At that time, in order to distinguish in the ball-room whether a
_courante_ or a minuet, whether a _gavotte_ or a _bourree_, were being
played, a keenness of rhythmic instinct was necessary, of which in truth
very little has survived in our young dancing people of today, who often
have to bethink themselves whether it is a waltz or a polka which the
music is beating in their ears with the rhythmic flail.
In the first decades of our century an ear for fine rhythmic _nuances_
of dance music scarcely existed any longer, while at the same time, in
concert-music, a greater wealth of rhythm was developing. Never were
people inspired by more rhythmically flat dance tunes than those of the
waltzes, schottisches, etc., which, for example, were danced in the
twenties. The ear for the fine shades of "danceableness" in musical
rhythm had at that time become absolutely dulled and had fallen asleep;
now it is perceptibly awakening once more. Our polkas, mazurkas, etc.,
based on the clearly defined original rhythm of the national
folk-dances, are promising harbingers of this. But is there not an
important hint for the historian of culture in the fact that the sense
for the finer dance rhythms began to die out at the time of the French
revolution and was most completely extinguished in the rough days of the
Napoleonic tempest and the decade immediately following, whereas in the
age of Louis XIV.
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