A favourite scotch measure: the relationship between a group of scottish solo dances and the tune ‘The flowers of Edinburgh’

Certain Scottish melodies seem to have inspired the dancing masters of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scotland to devise a diverse set of dances designed to be performed to particular tunes. ‘The Flowers of Edinburgh’, a 4/4 Scotch measure, has inspired a number of soft- and hard-shoe solo dances taking their names from the tune, as well as a Scottish country dance. This article focuses on how the creative processes of various dance teachers have left us with three or four dances with varied movement segmentation patterns, and several versions of these dances in relation to versions of the same tune. My aim is to illustrate the diversity of choreographic ideas and motifs in relation to a single tune, but also to examine whether we are dealing with discrete dances from different sources, or rather, similar versions of a smaller, shared repertoire of nineteenth-century dances.