Thoinot Arbeau was a pen name, an anagram from the author's actual name, Jehan Tabourot (1519-1588). He was the Canon of Lengres, and a scholar besides being a churchman. He was not a composer, and Orchesographie is actually a treatise on the dance.

Arbeau compiled and wrote it during his lifetime, with no view to publication. It did not appear in print until the year after his death. It is in the form of a dialogue between "Thoinot Arbeau" and his pupil, a youngster named "Capriol." The subject of this dialogue is the role of the dance as an essential part of the breeding and social life of educated and high-born men and women.

The volume has a multiplicity of values for later scholars and musicians. In the first place, it is by far the most complete description of fifteenth and sixteenth century dance to survive. It also details the steps, rhythm, and music of over forty of the main dances of the time, sometimes even detailing the instrumentation to be used. The musical examples are all just melody lines, but the harmonies are obvious and the rhythms are discussed in connection with the dance. The book is also valuable as a social document, for it goes into manners, dress, and courtship. For instance, Arbeau discusses pavanes as "walking with decorum and measured gravity," while in regard to the rustic "bransle" he cautions against bouncing too boisterously, which, "seems neither beautiful or honorable to me unless one is dancing with some strapping hussy from the servants' hall."

Dancing itself, Arbeau says, is valuable in assessing potential mates: "If you desire to marry you must realize that a mistress is won by the good temper and grace displayed while dancing; ... dancing is practiced to reveal whether lovers are ingood health and sound of limb, after which they are permitted to kiss their mistresses in order that they may touch and savor one another, thus to ascertain if they are shapely or emit an unpleasant odor as of bad meat."

© Joseph Stevenson, Rovi