Annotation:German Spa
X:1 T:German Spaw (sic), The L:1/8 M:2/4 S:McGlashan - Reels Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion (c. 1786) K:A c>d e/d/c/B/|AA B2|cc/A/ dd/B/|cc/A/ B2| c>d e/d/c/B/|AA B2|cc/A/ dd/B/|c/B/A/G/ A2:|| c>d ef|ga e2|aa/g/ ff/e/|dd/c/ B2| c>d ef|ga e2|a>g fe|B/e/^d/f/ e2| c>d e/d/c/B/|AA B2|cc/A/ dd/B/|cc/A/ B2| c>d e/d/c/B/|AA B2|cc/A/ dd/B/|c/B/A/G/ A2||
GERMAN SPA. AKA and see "New German Spa." English, American; Country Dance Tune (2/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The melody originated in England, but was soon transported to America. The earliest printings appear on or around the year 1780 or just before, often as "New German Spaw". Perhaps the earliest printing is in 'Bride's Favourite Collection of 200 Select Country Dances, Cotillons (London, 1776, Part 3, p. 87), and it appeared as "The new German spa dance" on p. 24 of Longman and Broderip's New Instructions for the German Flute (London), and as "The German spaw minuet" on page 20 of a similarly entitled tutor New Instructions for the Common Flute (Originally published in London, though preserved by the Litchfield, Connecticut, Historical Society). The tune and a dance called the "(New) German Spa" appeared in Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1788 (London; Saml. Ann and Peter Thompson), and Van Cleef and Keller (1980) believe it to have been known in New England shortly after its publication. A dance by the same name was copied into a MS by a Pepperell, Massachusetts, lass named Nancy Shepley around 1795, and though the tune was apparently the same, the dance figures differ from those found in Thompson's 1788 London publication. John Griffiths' A Collection of the Newest Cotillions and Country Dances (Northampton, Massachusetts, 1794) gives "German Spa" twice, as a cotillion and a country dance. The tune as printed by Thompson is to be found in several MS sources of the late 18th and early 19th century in both England and America; Van Cleef and Keller note a version for two fifes is contained in Joshua Cushing's 1805 Fifer's Companion (Salem, Massachusetts).
There were many German spas, as there were in other countries, including England, and the resort trade gradually shifted from England to Germany in the century after the Thompson's collection was printed. Petra Rau of the University of Portsmouth has written on the subject in her paper "Fun and Games? High Capitalism and the German Spa from Thackeray to Ford," and sees the German spa as "not just a 19th century cosmopolitan health resort but a international socio-sexual market place, affording the excitement of conspicuous waste (leisure and gambling) which affirms social status, and providing the opportunity for foreign erotic liaisons that do not threaten respectability at home." She poses that the foreign spas were a Victorian flirting with "the margins and the reverse side" of English and Victorian ideals and mores; "vulgarity, vice, licentiousness, lack of style and restraint, and economic failure." Further, she writes, the German-ness of the spas was linked to the pre-Bismarkian (Georgian?) idea of Germans as cousins of the British, cousins often seen as 'romantic adventurers' or 'learned high-minded intellectuals.'
The title may also refer to the term 'German Spa' as used in England for manufactured mineral water (as opposed to natural mineral springs). The seaside resort of Brighton, for example, lacked the natural water necessary for a spa. Frederick Struve, a research chemist from Saxony, invented a machine that reproduced the characteristics of natural mineral water using chemicals. He believed there was enough trade in Brighton to set up an establishment and in 1825 Struve opened the pump room of his 'German Spa'--later called the Royal German Spa after King William IV granted his patronage.
See also note for "annotation:New German Spa" for more information.
