Bourree: A Song History

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The bourrée is a French folk dance that exists in many varieties, and it is especially associated with the Auvergne in central France, though it is also danced elsewhere in France and in Spain's Vizcaya.[1] Poland's National Institute of Music and Dance likewise traces it to an Auvergne folk dance, done at a fairly brisk pace with small, light steps.[2] Michael Praetorius already mentioned the bourrée in his 1615 compendium Syntagma musicum.[1] Composed bourrées are in duple time, either 2/4 or 4/4, while some folk bourrées are in 3/8.[1] A telltale feature is the pickup: the music begins a little ahead of the downbeat, on the second half of the bar's last beat.[3][4]

Engraved page from a 1738 dance manual tracing the figure of the minuet as curving paths

George Bickham Jr., An Easy Introduction to Dancing: or, the Movements in the Minuet Fully Explained, etching, 1738. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). This plate charts a minuet, a court dance of the same era, rather than a bourrée.

In the seventeenth century the bourrée entered the repertoire of court dance, alongside the minuet.[2] Bourrée choreographies by the dancing master Louis Pecour are among the dances recorded in Feuillet notation in the early eighteenth century.[2] In the Baroque suite it became one of the extra dances that composers could slip in between the sarabande and the closing gigue.[4] Britannica counts it among the optional movements, or galanteries, in eighteenth-century suites by J.S. Bach and Handel.[1]

Handel wrote bourrées for both his Water Music and his Music for the Royal Fireworks.[3] The Water Music, composed in 1717 to entertain King George I from barges on the Thames, has a bourrée among the dances of its F major suite.[5][6] In the Music for the Royal Fireworks, commissioned by George II in 1749, a bourrée follows the opening overture.[7] One teaching text notes that Handel's bourrées can be taken much faster than the usual moderate tempo.[4] Bourrées remain familiar learning pieces today: Suzuki violin programs list a Bourrée by Handel in Book 2 and a Bach Bourrée in Book 3.[8][9]

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Sources

  1. Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Bourrée".
  2. Narodowy Instytut Muzyki i Tańca (Tańce Edu): "Bourrée".
  3. Interlude (Maureen Buja): "Dance, Dance, Dance: The Bourrée".
  4. LibreTexts Humanities (Elliott Jones, Santa Ana College): "2.18: Suite".
  5. The Orchestra Now, Bard College (Shawn Hutchison): "Handel's Water Music Suite No. 1".
  6. Boston Baroque (Martin Pearlman): "George Frideric Handel: Water Music".
  7. Classical-Music.com: "Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks".
  8. American Suzuki Institute, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point: "2026 Violin Repertoire Review List".
  9. University of Northern Iowa School of Music: "Suzuki Violin Book Revisions".