Dictionary of Music - Birding America

104 danceall the dampers and holds them up for as long as thepedal is depressed. This permits the strings to continuevibrating, creating a rich tone.dance An instrumental composition written as anaccompaniment for dancing or in a similar style.Dance music is probably the earliest form of purelyinstrumental music. Hundreds of musical forms arebased on dances; some, such as the POLKA andWALTZ, are still used to accompany dancing,whereas others, such as the PAVANE and GALLIARD,survive only as individual works or as movements ininstrumental suites. See also BALLET.dance band See BAND, def. 9.dancehall A style of popular dance music thatoriginated in Jamaican dance clubs, an offshoot ofboth reggae and rap. With bouncy, heavy-hittingrhythms, it draws on the basic structure of reggae,but its lyrics are less socially conscious and itsinstrumentation is lighter and largely computergenerated.The dancehall disk jockey is the counterpartof hip-hop’s rapper, rhyming over the rhythmswith lyrics steeped in Jamaican patois. Dancehallwas transplanted to the American mainland in thelate 1980s and was very popular there by the mid-1990s.danse (däNS).danza (dän′tsä).danza tedescaFrench for DANCE.The Italian word for DANCE.See under TEDESCA.danzón (dän tsōn′) Spanish. A syncopated versionof the eighteenth-century French CONTREDANSEthat developed in the late nineteenth century inCuba’s Oriente Province. It soon became the island’smost popular form of ballroom dance and remainedso until the 1930s.DATAbbreviation for digital audio tape; seeunder DIGITAL RECORDING.Davies (dā′vēz), Peter Maxwell, 1934– . AnEnglish composer who became known for hishighly dramatic music, which includes symphonies,operas, film scores, and music for small ensemble,some of the latter composed for his own chamberensemble, the Fires of London (founded 1970).Davies’s earlier works, particularly his MUSIC THE-ATER pieces of the late 1960s and early 1970s, areexpressionist in style (see EXPRESSIONISM). BothEight Songs for a Mad King (1969) and Miss Donnithorne’sMaggot (1974), for solo voice and smallinstrumental ensemble, feature a crazed, obsessiveindividual; in the former work the king screams andwheezes and mumbles his way through a fouroctavespan. Similarly Missa super l’homme armé(1968; rev. 1971) and Vesalii Icones (1969), forsoloist (singer in the former, dancer in the latter)and instrumental ensemble, represent violentattacks on religious hypocrisy. Both these compositionsshow Davies’s frequent borrowing of musicfrom the past, particularly from the Middle Agesand Renaissance, which he sometimes quotesdirectly and at other times simply alludes to or imitatesstylistically, using plainsong, church modes, orhocket. Occasionally Davies also used magicsquares—medieval puzzles of mystically or mathematicallyrelated numbers—to determine the formalstructure of pitches or rhythms. Other importantworks are Shakespeare Music (1964); the operasTaverner (1972), The Lighthouse (1980), Resurrection(1988), and The Doctor of Myddfai (1996); AveMaris Stella (1975), A Mirror of Whitening Light(1977), and Image, Reflection and Shadow (1982),all for chamber ensemble; six symphonies; concertos;the cantata The Three Kings (1995) and the oratorioJob (1997); and the music theater piece LeJongleur de Notre Dame (1978), a setting of the oldlegend for voice, juggler, chamber ensemble, andchildren’s chorus. Davies has also had a stronginterest in music education and has composednumerous works for young performers, includingtheater, choral and instrumental pieces.db.d.c.CAPO, DA).The abbreviation for decibel (see under BEL).Also, D.C. The abbreviation for da capo (seedeath metalSee under ROCK.