Tourdion

The tourdion (or tordion) (from the French verb "tordre" / to twist) is a lively dance, similar in nature to the galliard, and popular from the mid-15th to the late-16th centuries, first in the Burgundian court and then all over the French kingdom. The dance was accompanied frequently by the basse danse, due to their contrasting tempi, and were danced alongside the pavane and galliard, and the allemande and courante, also in pairs. In a triple meter, the tourdion's "was nearly the same as the Galliard, but the former was more rapid and smooth than the latter". Pierre Attaingnant published several tourdions in his first publication of collected dances in 1530, which contains, as the sixth and seventh items, a basse dance entitled "La Magdalena" with a following tourdion (it was only in 1949 that César Geoffray arranged this "following" tourdion as a four-voice chanson, by adding the lyrics "Quand je bois du vin clairet..."). Thoinot Arbeau later documented information about the tourdion in his work Orchésographie (Orchesography, pp. 49–57), published in 1589.