Payne’s 2nd Set of Quadrilles by Edward Payne –

Payne's Second Set of Quadrilles, with their proper Figures in French & English, including the Celebrated Nouvelle Pastorelle, Directions to each Dance as performed at Almack's & the Nobilities Assemblies. To which is added the favorite Tripoli Tripola Dance, performed by Miss Maugin & Miss Mori in Gonsalve de Cordoue. all Aranged for the Piano Forte, Harp or Violin.

This is the c.1816 first edition of Payne's Second Set of quadrilles, this copy is printed on paper watermarked for 1815. It could in theory have been printed in 1815, but a date of April 1816 or later seems more likely (see below). Payne's Second Set have one of the more complicated histories of any Regency era quadrille set, many variants of it were published. Edward Payne (who died either in late 1818 or early 1819) published at least three editions himself, the third probably in mid 1817, his initial three editions only differed in minor respects: the cover was updated each time, and the tunes became named in the second edition. Other than that the figures and music were consistent across all three editions (the same printing plates seem to have been reused).

The second edition names for the tunes were La Nouvelle Alliance, L'Amaside, L'Anonime, La Liberte, La Sephora and La Pastoralle. The names that can be seen in this the first edition are those of the dancing figures - Pantalon, L'Ete, etc.. These figures are the same as those of Payne's c.1815 first edition of his First Set, but with the addition of a La Pastoralle dance; La Pastoralle was so popular that it was often danced as part of the First Set, Payne suggested in his 1818 Quadrille Dancer that it could be danced after the finale of any quadrille set. Payne's version of La Pastoralle is a little quirky, it has 36 bars of music rather than the more common 32 bar arrangement; this was a common arrangement in 1816, but by around 1817 most La Pastoralle arrangements were simplified to use just 32 bars.

Payne published a book called the Quadrille Instructor in September 1816. I know of no surviving copies of this work, but it was advertised to include his first four sets of quadrilles. A preceptor published by Charles Wheatstone c.1817 exists that may be derived from Payne's lost book; Wheatstone's book documented the music and figures for Payne's first four sets of Quadrilles, but with significant differences for Payne's Second Set compared to the first three editions. Wheatstone's version of Payne's Second Set featured the same tunes as Payne's own publications, but replaced La Pastoralle with a quadrille called Les Echos (which was actually the 6th Quadrille in James Paine's 1816 Second Set); this Wheatstone publication also included a new set of dancing figures for the Quadrilles. These new figures can be identified as those from Payne's 1817 7th Set of Quadrilles, perhaps implying that Payne had published a 4th edition of the Second Set that had adopted the new set of figures. It seems likely that the error/alteration in the figures originated in Payne's Quadrille Instructor publication and was adopted by Wheatstone, but that's just speculation.

The story gets more complicated however. We can only speculate about the contents of Payne's 1816 Quadrille Instructor, but he also published a book in 1818 called the Quadrille Dancer, this work does still survive. This later work documented the figures for Payne's first nine quadrille sets; but somewhat confusingly the figures for the 2nd and 7th sets were transposed. That may have been a printing error, it may have been deliberate, but the 7th Set is presented with the figures from the Second Set and vice-versa. The figures for the Second Set in Payne's Quadrille Dancer therefore match those from Wheatstone's preceptor, except that the Les Echos quadrille was replaced with a quadrille called La Victoire (Payne presumably held no claim to Paine's Les Echos quadrille, though he would go on to create his own Les Nouveaux Echos quadrille in his 1818 9th Set of Quadrilles, with figures derived from Paine's Les Echos).

A further publication was issued in Edinburgh in late 1818 that documented the first six of Payne's quadrille sets, written by Barclay Dun. Dun's book documents Payne's Second Set using the same tune names and figure sequences that appear in Payne's own Quadrille Dancer, probably implying that Dun had access to a copy of Payne's book when preparing his own. It's Dun's version of Payne's quadrilles that are best known today (though there are several unfortunate errors in Dun's arrangements that hint that he may not have been familiar with Payne's music).

My guess is that Payne either confused or deliberately changed the figures of his Second Set in his 1816 Quadrille Instructor, and they remained thus altered into his 1818 Quadrille Dancer, and also into the publications of Wheatstone and Dun. There are therefore many variants of Payne's Second Set that may be encountered. The picture is further complicated if James Paine's unrelated but similarly dated Second Set is confused with Edward Payne's Second Set, as is partially the case in the Wheatstone publication!

The cover of this, the first edition, refers to a ballet called Gonsalve de Cordoue. Auguste Vestris and Frédéric Venua produced the similarly named ballet of Gonsalve de Cordove in April 1816; if (as seems likely) it was the source of Payne's Tripoli Tripola Dance then the Second Set must have been first published in 1816. The reference may however be to some other production based on the same historical story. The King's Theatre Opera House had Mademoiselles Maugin and Mori on stage together in January 1815 in the Ballet of Zephir et Flora, and again in January 1816 in Mars et L'Amour; an 1815/1816 date for initial publication is therefore consistent with a reference to their dancing.

Suggested arrangements of the dances have been animated (using the figures from the first edition, but with tune names adopted from the second edition) here:

1. La Nouvelle Alliance (Pantalon) - https://www.regencydances.org/index.php?wL=2052
2. L'Amaside (L'Ete) - https://www.regencydances.org/index.php?wL=2053
3. L'Anonime (Poulle) - https://www.regencydances.org/index.php?wL=2054
4. La Liberte (Trenise) - https://www.regencydances.org/index.php?wL=2055
5. La Sephora (Finale) - https://www.regencydances.org/index.php?wL=2056
6. La Pastoralle - https://www.regencydances.org/index.php?wL=2057

You can read more about Edward Payne here: https://www.regencydances.org/paper009.php . You can read more about the figures of the First Set of Quadrilles (which are essentially identical to the figures in this publication) here: https://www.regencydances.org/paper021.php .