Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nachtanz

(Ger.: ‘after-dance’).

A generic term for the second of a pair of dances, usually a fast, triple-metre reworking of the harmonic and melodic material of the first. Many familiar dance forms, particularly of the Renaissance and early Baroque periods, fulfilled this function, appearing in musical sources with a bewildering variety of names including rotta, espringale, saltarello, piva, tourdion, galliard, tripla, sciolta and Proportz.

The idea of contrasting an elegant gliding dance (usually with foot movements close to the floor, often processional) with a vigorous leaping one seems to date at least from the 12th century, for literary references mention carole-espringale pairs. The earliest surviving musical documentation of a Nachtanz is a 14th-century Italian manuscript (GB-Lbl Add.29987); there each of two pieces, Lamento di Tristano and La Manfredina (f.64r), is followed by an after-dance called ‘La Rotta’ which condenses and ornaments the thematic material of its predecessor without changing the basic metre. In the 15th century it seems to have been common to pair the basse danse (in Italy the bassadanza) with the pas de Brabant (or saltarello). Ordinarily the Nachtanz for a basse danse consisted of a new polyphonic arrangement woven round the tenor of the first dance, with the tenor played twice as fast (for an illustration of the application of proportions to dance tenors, see Saltarello). The pairing of dances in this way was apparently a genuine reflection of contemporary dance practice, for Antonio Cornazano’s treatise Libro dell’arte del danzare (c1455) explicitly prescribes the pairing of bassadanza and saltarello: ‘detro ad ella [the bassadanza] se fa sempre lui [the saltarello]’.

In the 16th century the pairing of dances was seldom mentioned in treatises. Printed collections of instrumental music, however, contain innumerable examples of dance pairs based on similar thematic material, and at the beginning of the 17th century at least some writers on music still thought the relationship between paired dances worthy of mention. The relationship of Nachtänze to their models in certain 16th- and 17th-century pairs became nearly standardized, and served to distinguish otherwise almost identical pairs. For example, the choreographic differences between the two commonplace groups pavan-galliard and passamezzo-saltarello seem to have been limited to slight variations in tempo and height of step from the floor. Nonetheless, the respective pairs were musically linked in different ways: the Nachtanz galliard was usually a triple-metre variant of the pavan melody, while the Nachtanz saltarello was a triple-metre variant of the characteristic tenor or bass ostinato in the passamezzo. Morley (1597), Haussmann (preface to Venusgarten, 1602) and Isaac Posch (preface to Musicalische Ehrenfreudt, 1618) all attested to the fact that Nachtänze were often improvised in performance. Morley gave quite specific instructions on the proper method of deriving a galliard from its pavan (see Galliard), while Posch defended his decision to include Nachtänze in his collection by decrying the resulting disorder when composers left their creation to the dubious craftsmanship of performers. The Tanz-Nachtanz pairing persisted in 17th-century collections of dance music from Germany and England longer than in French or Italian sources, even appearing within multi-movement suites like those of Schein’s Banchetto musicale (1617). There each suite ends with an allemande and its tripla, the latter nothing more than the simplest possible metrical transformation of the allemande themes.

Some scholars, particularly Hermann Beck (Die Suite, Mw, xxvi, 1964; Eng. trans., 1966) and Philipp Spitta (Johann Sebastian Bach, Eng. trans., 1884–5, 2/1899/R, ii, 84ff), have argued that the Tanz-Nachtanz idea was a direct forerunner of the Baroque suite. For a different view of the relationship between these formal ideas, see Suite, §§2, 3.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. Petzsch: ‘Ein Nachtanz aus dem spämittelalterlichen Ottobeuren’, Mf, xxxii (1979), 417–19

C. Petzsch: ‘Liedautoren adaptieren Usuelles: Kehrreim, Vor- und Nachtanz’, Historische Volksmusikforschung: Medulin 1979, 87–104

M.E. Little and C.G. Marsh: La danse noble: an Inventory of Dances and Sources (Williamstown, MA, 1992)

SUZANNE G. CUSICK

Nachtgall, Othmar.

See Luscinius, Othmar.

Nachthorn

(Ger.).

See under Organ stop.

Nachtigal, Sebald

(b Nuremberg, c1460; d Nuremberg, between 24 Feb and 26 May 1518). German organist and ?composer. He was the son of the Nuremberg Meistersinger Konrad Nachtigall. He was probably close to the Nuremberg humanist circles around Conradus Celtis and in particular to the patron Sebald Schreyer who was Kirchenmeister at St Sebaldus. In March 1490 he was appointed senior organist at St Sebaldus, where he remained until his death.

Nachtigal was the only outstanding Nuremberg organist between Conrad Paumann, who left Nuremberg in 1450, and Paulus Lautensack (ii), active there from 1541. For this reason Gerber attributed to him certain anonymous compositions in the Sebald liturgy (in D-Bsb 40021). These are four-voice sections of the Sebald hymn Hymnum cantet plebs iucunda and of a rhymed Office for St Sebald with a cantus firmus in the tenor, and three three-voice settings of Regiae stirpis soboles Sebalde, written by Celtis in 1493. (R. Gerber: ‘Die Sebaldus-Kompositionen der Berliner Handschrift 40021’, Mf, ii (1949), 107–27)

FRANZ KRAUTWURST

Nachtigall

(Ger.).

A bird-imitating Organ stop (Vogelgesang).