ABSTRACT
The almains were being danced to country-dance-style tunes in compound duple time long before the 1670s, when Butler Buggins copied a version of the Black Almain tune. The frequent use of individual Doubles and Singles attested by Thoinot Arbeau could easily accommodate two-plus-one bars of music. The keyboard sources reveal that composers of the almain were tied to the regular phrase structure, in a way which contrasts strongly with the experiments of William Lawes, John Jenkins and the masque composers and are not therefore as adventurous as they might have been. The music of Lawes enables us to glimpse a transition well under way in the mid 1630s. But since the use of odd numbers of bars increased from the 1630s on, and was very often associated with a more idiomatic style, or whether the gradual distortion of an all-too-predictable regularity was part of the challenge to composers in creating a non-functional, art-music style.
