San Francisco Quadrilles

After taking a broad swipe at an American standard yesterday, I thought I'd go further back in time to show off one more type of sheet music cover before getting back on the subject of dance (to which this blog is supposed to be dedicated). This is the cover for a collection called San Francisco Quadrilles and it dates from 1852. The music is professed to be "arranged from the most favorite negro melodies of the piano forte" a claim which, in itself, speaks magnitudes about the attitudes of the time. The pianoforte (whether the word became merged after the printing of this sheet music or if the music cover reflects the printer's inability to spell is unknown to me) is a diminutive piano based roughly on the harpsichord – so it's hard for me to imagine a "collection of most favorite negro melodies" played on one. Probably just another indignity visited on African Americans of the time.

Embarrassing racial implications aside, the artwork is more reminiscent of the sort of work you'd expect on a stock certificate or bank note. This is common of the time – the art employed is stunning for its complexity and execution. Later cover art would become grossly more cartoonish and kitschy but in the mid-eighteen hundreds a lot of labor was put into rendering acanthus leaves and scrollwork and vistas of distant lands. Some themes persist – the abuse of people of color and the vision of the world as something to be squashed and conquered stuck around until the end.

I've actually danced a quadrille. Its – strange. You're propelled back to a time when men and women couldn't even sit on the same side of the dance floor let alone comingle and (gasp) touch. If you get a chance to try a vintage dance event, go for it. It really opens your eyes to where more modern forms come from and makes you very thankful you didn't live in the eighteen hundreds!