Passepied
The passepied is a French court dance. Originating as a kind of Breton branle, it was adapted to courtly use in the 16th century and is found in 18th-century French opera and ballet in pastoral scenes, latterly in baroque instrumental suites of dances. In English the passepied has been called "paspy", a phonetic approximation of the French pronunciation; the earliest historical mention of the passepied was by Noël du Fail in 1548, who said it was common at Breton courts. François Rabelais and Thoinot Arbeau, writing in the 16th century, identify the dance as a type of branle characteristic of Brittany. At this time it was a fast duple-time dance with three-bar phrases, therefore of the branle simple type. Like many folk-dances it was popular at the court of Louis XIV; the passepied was remodelled by Jean-Baptiste Lully as a pastoral concert dance, first appearing in the 1680s as a faster minuet. It is accounted the fastest of the triple-time dances of the time with a time signature of 38, its phrases starting upon the last beat of the measure.
Its phrasing had to divide into four measures to accommodate the four characteristic tiny steps over two measures. It used the steps of the minuet, which Lully had long before adapted, to quite different effect and tracing elaborate patterns upon the floor. After this the passepied appeared in a great many theatrical productions, including those of Jean-Philippe Rameau, it is found as late as 1774 in Christoph Willibald Gluck's Iphegenia in Aulis. Writing in 1739 Johann Mattheson described the passepied as a fast dance, with a character approaching frivolity, for which reason it lacks "the eagerness, anger, or heat expressed by the gigue". Italians used it as a finale for instrumental sinfonie. Passepieds appear in suites such as J. S. Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 1, or dramatic music such as his Overture in the French Style for harpsichord. There are two Passepieds in minor and major keys to be played in the order I, II, I, or else passepieds occur in contrasting pairs, the first reappearing after the second as a da capo.
Léo Delibes wrote a passepied as part of his incidental music for the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. More modern examples include: The fourth and final movement of Claude Debussy's Suite bergamasque for piano The third movement of Igor Stravinsky's Symphony in C, which consists of a minuet and fugue The second number in act 2 of Sergei Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella The first of five dances in the third movement, "Révérences engrenées, premier pentacle", of Henri Pousseur's Jardinet avec automates for piano The third movement of Christopher Rouse's orchestral ballet Friandises The fourth movement of the Garden of the Senses Suite in part 2 of Michael Gandolfi's The Garden of Cosmic Speculation Little, Meredith Ellis. 2001. "Passepied ". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers. Little, Jenne, Natalie. Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach. Indiana: Indiana University Press. CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list.
Mattheson, Johann. 1958. "Johann Mattheson on Affect and Rhetoric in Music", translated by Hans Lenneberg. Journal of Music Theory 2, no. 1: 47-84. Scholes, Percy A.. John Owen Ward, ed; the Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.. Sutton, Julia. 1985. "The Minuet: An Elegant Phoenix". Dance Chronicle 8, nos. 3 & 4:119–52. Google Books - "Passepied" in Little and Jenne's Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach Video - Baroque passepied from the finale of Lully's Thesee Video - Passepied de Pécour, chorégraphie by Feuillet, 1709, danced by Laura Brembilla and Bruno Benne Music video - Passepieds 1 and 2, from Telemann's Recorder Suite in A minor, solo: Moisés Sánchez Ross
Partita for Violin No. 2 (Bach)
The Partita in D minor for solo violin by Johann Sebastian Bach was written between 1717 and 1720. It is a part of his compositional cycle called Partitas for Solo Violin; the partita contains five movements, given in Italian as: Allemanda Corrente Sarabanda Giga CiacconaExcept for the ciaccona, the movements are dance types of the time, they are listed by their French names: Allemande, Sarabande and Chaconne. The final movement is written in the form of variations, lasts as long as the first four movements combined. Performance time of the whole partita varies between 26 and 32 minutes, depending on the approach and style of the performer. Professor Helga Thoene suggests that this partita, its last movement, was a tombeau written in memory of Bach's first wife, Maria Barbara Bach, though this theory is controversial. Yehudi Menuhin called the Chaconne "the greatest structure for solo violin that exists". Violinist Joshua Bell has said the Chaconne is "not just one of the greatest pieces of music written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history.
It's a spiritually powerful piece powerful, structurally perfect." He played the piece busking in L'Enfant Plaza for The Washington Post. Since Bach's time, several transcriptions of the piece have been made for other instruments for the piano, for the piano left-hand. Johannes Brahms, in a letter to Clara Schumann in June 1877, said about the ciaccona: On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind. Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann each wrote piano accompaniments for the work. Carl Reinecke transcribed the piece for piano duet; the earliest version for organ is by William Thomas Best. Further transcriptions are by John Cook, Wilhelm Middelschulte, Walter Henry Goss-Custard, Henri Messerer. In the preface to his 1955 transcription, John Cook writes: "The Chaconne is sublimely satisfying in its original form, yet many will agree that a single violin is only able to hint at the vast implications of much of this music … It is not unreasonable to suppose that Bach would have chosen the organ, had he transcribed the Chaconne himself, as the instrument best suited to the scale of his ideas … A good performance on the violin may be taken as the best guide to interpretation on the organ — the two instruments are not without their points in common, both were beloved of Bach."
There is a transcription of the Chaconne for solo cello made by cellist Johann Sebastian Paetsch in 2015. This has been published by the Hofmeister Musikverlag in Leipzig; the Chaconne is performed on guitar. Marc Pincherle, Secretary of the French Society of Musicology in Paris, wrote in 1930: "If, insofar as certain rapid monodic passages are concerned, opinion is divided between the violin and the guitar as the better medium, the guitar always triumphs in polyphonic passages; the timbre of the guitar creates new and emotional resonance and unsuspected dynamic gradations in those passages which might have been created purely for the violin. Many guitarists today prefer to play the Chaconne directly from the violin score. There are a number of transcriptions of the Chaconne for orchestras of different sizes, including Leopold Stokowski's transcription for a full symphony orchestra. Anne Dudley arranged Bach's Chaconne for piano trio, a recording by the Eroica Trio appears on their Baroque album.
In 2005 Joseph C. Mastroianni published Chaconne The Novel. Milo, abandoned by the father who introduced him to Chaconne, studies in Spain for four years to master the piece. In 2008 Arnold Steinhardt, the violin soloist and first violinist of the Guarneri String Quartet, published Violin Dreams, a memoir about his life as a violinist and about his ultimate challenge: playing Bach's Chaconne. In 2017 Márta Ábrahám and Barnabás Dukay published a book about Bach's Chaconne: Excerpts from Eternity – The Purification of Time and Character, the Fulfilment of Love and Cooperation with the Celestial Will in Johann Sebastian Bach's Ciaccona for Violin. Notes Bibliography Altschuler, Eric Lewin. 2005. "Were Bach's Toccata and Fugue BWV565 and the Ciacconia from BWV1004 Lute Pieces?" The Musical Times 146, no. 1893: 77–86. Anderson, Rick. 2002. "Johann Sebastian Bach: Morimur. Hilliard Ensemble. ECM 289 461 895-2, 2001." Notes, second series, 59, No. 1: 145. Berg, Christopher. 2009. "Bach, Busoni and the Chaconne".
Pristine Madness Block, Melissa. 2007. "Violin Dreams': Chasing Bach's Elusive Chaconne". NPR Music. Erickson, Raymond. 2002. "Secret Codes and Bach's Great'Ciaccona'". Early Music America 8, no. 2:34–43. Humphreys, David. 2002. "Esoteric Bach". Early Music 30, no. 2: 307. Mastroianni, Joseph C. n.d. Chaconne: The Novel; the Devil's Advocate. Menuhin, Yehudi. 2001. Unfinished Journey, new edition. London: Pimlico. ISBN 978-0-7126-6809-5. Pincherle, Marc. 1930. "Bach and the Guitar".. Rich, Alan. 2006. "Morimur: Is There Sex after Bach?" In his So I've Heard: Notes of a Migratory Music Critic, 66–67. Milwaukee: Amadeus. ISBN 1-57467-133-2. Schumann, C
Renaissance dance
Renaissance dances belong to the broad group of historical dances. During the Renaissance period, there was a distinction between country dances and court dances. Court dances required the dancers to be trained and were for display and entertainment, whereas country dances could be attempted by anyone. At Court, the formal entertainment would be followed by many hours of country dances which all present could join in. Dances described as country dances such as Chiarantana or Chiaranzana remained popular over a long period - over two centuries in the case of this dance. A Renaissance dance can be likened to a ball. Knowledge of court dances has survived better than that of country dances as they were collected by dancing masters in manuscripts and in printed books; the earliest surviving manuscripts that provide detailed dance instructions are from 15th century Italy. The earliest printed dance manuals come from late 16th century Italy; the earliest dance descriptions in England come from the Gresley manuscript c.1500 found in the Derbyshire Record Office, D77 B0x 38 pp 51–79.
These have been published as "Cherwell Thy Wyne: Dances of fifteenth-century England from the Gresley manuscript". The first printed English source appeared in the first edition of Playford; the dances in these manuals are varied in nature. They range from stately "processional" dances to fast, lively dances; the former, in which the dancers' feet were not raised high off the floor were styled the dance basse while energetic dances with leaps and lifts were called the haute dance. Some were choreographed, others were improvised on the spot. One dance for couples, a form of the galliard called lavolta or volta, involved a rather intimate hold between the man and woman, with the woman being lifted into the air while the couple made a 3⁄4 turn. Other dances, such as branles or bransles, were danced by many people in a line. Our knowledge of 15th-century Italian dances comes from the surviving works of three Italian dance masters: Domenico da Piacenza, Antonio Cornazzano and Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro.
Their work deals with similar dances, though some evolution can be seen. The main types of dances described are bassa balletti; these are the earliest European dances to be well-documented, as we have a reasonable knowledge of the choreographies and music used. Www.earlydancecircle.co.uk The Renaissance Dance Homepage Society for Creative Anachronism Renaissance Dance Homepage Renaissance dance category at Curlie Renaissance Dance Events listed at the Calendar of Early-Dance Official website Many groups exist that recreate historical music and dance from the Renaissance period The Early Dance Circle is an umbrella group for early dance in the UK Renaissance Footnotes, a UK dance group recreating dances of the renaissance
Partitas for keyboard (Bach)
The Partitas, BWV 825–830, are a set of six harpsichord suites written by Johann Sebastian Bach, published individually beginning in 1726 together as Clavier-Übung I in 1731, the first of his works to be published under his own direction. They were, among the last of his keyboard suites to be composed, the others being the six English Suites, BWV 806-811 and the six French Suites, BWV 812-817, as well as the Overture in the French style, BWV 831; the six partitas for keyboard form the last set of suites that Bach composed, are the most technically demanding of the three. They were composed between 1725 and 1730 or 1731; as with the French and English Suites, the autograph manuscript of the Partitas is no longer extant. In keeping with a nineteenth-century naming tradition that labelled Bach's first set of Suites English and the second French, the Partitas are sometimes referred to as the German Suites; this title, however, is a publishing convenience. In comparison with the two earlier sets of suites, the Partitas are by far the most free-ranging in terms of structure.
Unlike the English Suites, for example, wherein each opens with a strict prelude, the Partitas feature a number of different opening styles including an ornamental Overture and a Toccata. Although each of the Partitas was published separately under the name Clavier-Übung, they were subsequently collected into a single volume in 1731 with the same name, which Bach himself chose to label his Opus 1. Unlike the earlier sets of suites, Bach intended to publish seven Partitas, advertising in the Spring of 1730 upon the publication of the fifth Partita that the promised collected volume would contain two more such pieces; the plan was revised to include a total of eight works: six Partitas in Part I and two larger works in Part II, the Italian Concerto, BWV 971, the Overture in the French style, BWV 831. The second of these is an eleven-movement partita, the largest such keyboard work Bach composed, may in fact be the elusive "seventh partita" mentioned in 1730; the Overture in the French style was written in C minor, but was transposed a half step down for publication to complete the tonal scheme of Parts I and II as described below.
The tonalities of the six Partitas may seem to be irregular, but in fact they form a sequence of intervals going up and down by increasing amounts: a second up, a third down, a fourth up, a fifth down, a sixth up. This key sequence continues into Clavier-Übung II with the two larger works: the Italian Concerto, a seventh down, the Overture in the French style, an augmented fourth up, thus this sequence of tonalities customary for 18th-century keyboard compositions is complete, beginning with the first letter of his name and ending with the last letter while including both A and C along the way. Partita No. 1 in B♭ major, BWV 825Praeludium, Corrente, Menuet I, Menuet II, GiguePartita No. 2 in C minor, BWV 826Sinfonia, Courante, Rondeaux, CapriccioPartita No. 3 in A minor, BWV 827Fantasia, Corrente, Burlesca, GiguePartita No. 4 in D major, BWV 828Ouvertüre, Courante, Sarabande, GiguePartita No. 5 in G major, BWV 829Praeambulum, Corrente, Tempo di Minuetto, GiguePartita No. 6 in E minor, BWV 830Toccata, Corrente, Sarabande, Tempo di Gavotta, Gigue Richard Troeger First recording on clavichord.
Menno van Delft Wanda Landowska Ralph Kirkpatrick Helmut Walcha Gustav Leonhardt Martin Galling Blandine Verlet Kenneth Gilbert Trevor Pinnock Huguette Dreyfus Scott Ross Christophe Rousset Andreas Staier Masaaki Suzuki Zuzana Růžičková Pascal Dubreuil Peter Watchorn Martin Gester Jory Vinikour Dinu Lipatti, Glenn Gould Tatiana Nikolayeva András Schiff Maria Tipo Wolfgang Rübsam Risto Lauriala Maria João Pires Sergey Schepkin Angela Hewitt Richard Goode Gianluca Luisi Martha Argerich Murray Perahia Vladimir Ashkenazy Andres Carciente Igor Levit Judicael Perroy Partita no.2 Works for keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach English Suites, BWV 806-811 French Suites, BWV 812-817 List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach printed during his lifetime Bach, J. S. Klaus Engler, ed. 6 Partiten, BWV 825–830, Wiener Urtext Edition, Schott/Universal Edition Schulenberg, The Keyboard Music of J. S. Bach, New York and London: Routledge, pp. 321–345, ISBN 0415974003 Partitas for keyboard: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project Essay by Yo Tomita on Bach's Partitas
Bourrée
The bourrée is a dance of French origin and the words and music that accompany it. The bourrée resembles the gavotte in that it is in double time and has a dactylic rhythm. However, it is somewhat quicker, its phrase starts with a quarter-bar anacrusis or "pick-up", whereas a gavotte has a half-bar anacrusis. In the Baroque era, after the Academie de Dance was established by Louis XIV in 1661, the French court adapted the bourrée, like many such dances, for the purposes of concert dance. In this way it gave its name to a ballet step characteristic of the dance, a rapid movement of the feet while en pointe or demi-pointe, so to the sequence of steps called pas de bourrée; the bourrée became an optional movement in the classical suite of dances, J. S. Bach and Chopin wrote bourrées, not intending them to be danced; the bourrée originates in Auvergne in France. It is sometimes called the "French clog dance" or a "branle of the sabots". First mentioned as a popular dance in 1665 in Clermont-Ferrand, it still survives in Auvergne in the Massif Central and in the department of Ariège and is danced during bals folk in France and in other countries.
The present-day dance in lower Auvergne called Montagnarde, is in triple time while that of high Auvergne called Auvergnate is in double time. Modern variants termed bourrées are danced as partner dances, circle dances, square dances and line dances; however bourrées have been composed as abstract musical pieces since the mid-16th century. Michael Praetorius mentions it in his musical compendium Syntagma musicum and introduces it as a dance in his Terpsichore. However, there is no early dance notation and it is impossible to assess the early interaction of the folk dance and the courtly dance. Musically, the bourrée took on the common binary form of classical dance movements, sometimes extended by a second bourée, the two to be played in a grand ternary form. Marguerite de Navarre, sister to the King of Sweden, introduced the dance to the French court in 1565 and it was popular until the reign of Louis XIII and opened many balls, but the bourrée took some time to appear in the early ballet dance notation of the French baroque theatre.
The step with two movements is not illustrated by Feuillet but appears in Rameau as the "true" pas de bourée, the simpler step, with one movement, is identified with the fleuret. The basic step, with one initial movement and three subsequent changes of weight in a measure, can be performed in a great many variations, varieties of this step appear throughout the notated dances that were published in the eighteenth century, starting with Feuillet in 1700; the minuet step is a step composed of more basic steps. The pas de bourée of one movement is the second half of the most common minuet step, the minuet step of two movements, or "one and a fleuret", as the English master Tomlinson described it; the rare pas de bourée of two movements, mentioned above, occurs as a graceful variation in some recorded passapied, as part of a minuet step of three movements. As formalised in classical ballet the skipping step of the bourrée became a quick, gliding step en pointe or demi-pointe, one of the most-used step sequences of ballet.
A pas de bourrée, more known as the "behind side front" or "back side front", is a quick sequence of movements taken in preparation for a larger step. In one account it begins with an extension of the first leg while demi plié, closing it to the second as both transit to relevé, extending the second leg to an open position and again closing first to second in demi plié, or with legs straight if quick or as the final step of an enchainement. There are several variants. A pas de bourrée piqué picks up the feet in between steps. In his Der Vollkommene Capellmeister, Johann Mattheson wrote of the bourrée, "its distinguishing feature resides in contentment and a pleasant demeanor, at the same time it is somewhat carefree and relaxed, a little indolent and easygoing, though not disagreeable". Johann Sebastian Bach used the bourrée in his suites as one of the optional dance movements that come after the sarabande but before the gigue, he wrote two short bourrées in his Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach.
That in his Lute Suite in E Minor is popular. Handel wrote several bourrées in his solo chamber sonatas. In the 19th century Frédéric Chopin and Emmanuel Chabrier wrote bourrées for the piano; the Victorian English composer, Sir Hubert Parry included a bourrée in his Lady Radnor Suite. The bourrée has been used by a number of pop and rock music bands Bach's E minor Bourrée for the lute. In 1969 both Bakerloo and Jethro Tull released versions of this, the former as a single, "Drivin' Bachwards", on Harvest Records in July and on their self-titled debut album the following December, the latter on their August album Stand Up. Paul McCartney stated that The Beatles had known the tune for a long time and that it had inspired his song "Blackbird". Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin played the opening section of Bourrée in E minor as part of the solo of a live performance of Heartbreaker and Tenacious D play a short rendering in "Rock Your Socks" on their eponymous album and in "Classico" on their second album.
Rock guitarist Blues Saraceno plays a jazz version in the beginning and end of the track "Bouree" on his third album, Hairpick. Other adapted bourées include: The
Baroque
The Baroque is a ornate and extravagant style of architecture, painting and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th until the mid-18th century. It preceded the Rococo and Neoclassical styles, it was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant architecture and music, though Lutheran Baroque art developed in parts of Europe as well. The Baroque style used contrast, exuberant detail, deep colour and surprise to achieve a sense of awe; the style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome spread to France, northern Italy and Portugal to Austria and southern Germany. By the 1730s, it had evolved into an more flamboyant style, called rocaille or Rococo, which appeared in France and central Europe until the mid to late 18th century; the English word baroque comes directly from the French, may have been adapted from the Portuguese term barroco, a flawed pearl. Both words are related to the Spanish term berruca; the term did not describe a style of music or art.
Prior to the 18th century, the French baroque and Portuguese barroco were terms related to jewelry, An example from 1531 uses the term to describe pearls in an inventory of Charles V's treasures. The word appears in a 1694 edition of Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française, which describes baroque as "only used for pearls that are imperfectly round." A 1728 Portuguese dictionary describes barroco as relating to a "coarse and uneven pearl."The French term for the artistic style may have had roots in the medieval Latin word baroco, a philosophical term, invented in the 13th century by scholastics to describe a complicated type of syllogism, or logical argument. In the 16th century the philosopher Michel de Montaigne associated the term'baroco' with "Bizarre and uselessly complicated." In the 18th century, the term was used to describe music, was not flattering. In an anonymous satirical review of the première of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie in October 1733, printed in the Mercure de France in May 1734, the critic wrote that the novelty in this opera was "du barocque", complaining that the music lacked coherent melody, was unsparing with dissonances changed key and meter, speedily ran through every compositional device.
In 1762, Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française wrote that the term could be used figuratively to describe something "irregular, bizarre or unequal."Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a musician and composer as well as philosopher, wrote in 1768 in the Encyclopédie: "Baroque music is that in which the harmony is confused, loaded with modulations and dissonances. The singing is harsh and unnatural, the intonation difficult, the movement limited, it appears that term comes from the word'baroco' used by logicians."In 1788, the term was defined by Quatremère de Quincy in the Encyclopédie Méthodique as "an architectural style, adorned and tormented". The terms "style baroque" and "musique baroque" appeared in Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française in 1835. By the mid-19th century, art critics and historians had adopted the term as a way to ridicule post-Renaissance art; this was the sense of the word as used in 1855 by the leading art historian Jacob Burkhardt, who wrote that baroque artists "despised and abused detail" because they lacked "respect for tradition."Alternatively, a derivation from the name of the Italian painter Federico Barocci has been suggested.
In 1888, the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin published the first serious academic work on the style, Renaissance und Barock, which described the differences between the painting and architecture of the Renaissance and the Baroque. The Baroque style of architecture was a result of doctrines adopted by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1545–63, in response to the Protestant Reformation; the first phase of the Counter-Reformation had imposed a severe, academic style on religious architecture, which had appealed to intellectuals but not the mass of churchgoers. The Council of Trent decided instead to appeal to a more popular audience, declared that the arts should communicate religious themes with direct and emotional involvement. Lutheran Baroque art developed as a confessional marker of identity, in response to the Great Iconoclasm of Calvinists. Baroque churches were designed with a large central space, where the worshippers could be close to the altar, with a dome or cupola high overhead, allowing light to illuminate the church below.
The dome was one of the central symbolic features of baroque architecture illustrating the union between the heavens and the earth, The inside of the cupola was lavishly decorated with paintings of angels and saints, with stucco statuettes of angels, giving the impression to those below of looking up at heaven. Another feature of baroque churches are the quadratura. Quadratura paintings of Atlantes below the cornices appear to be supporting the ceiling of the church. Unlike the painted ceilings of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, which combined different scenes, each with its own perspective, to be looked at one at a time, the Baroque ceiling paintings were created so the viewer on the floor of the church would see the entire ceiling in correct perspective, as if the figures were real; the interiors of baroque churches became more and more ornate in the High Baroque, an
