Gavotte: A Song History

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The word gavotte reached English in the 1690s from French, which took it from an Old Provençal term for a mountaineers' dance, itself named for the gavots, as people of the Alps were locally called.[1] Tradition holds that the dance began with the Gavots, the people of Gap in the old province of Dauphiné in southeastern France, and Britannica describes its early form as an exuberant country dance that closed with each couple sharing a kiss.[2] Taken up at the French and English courts of the 1600s and 1700s, it grew more formal, with kisses giving way to an exchange of flowers, and its music came to be marked by a pair of upbeats leading into the bar.[2]

Engraving of elegantly dressed men and women sitting and dancing on the grass in a wooded park.

Jacques Philippe Le Bas, Gallant Conversation (Conversation Galante), etching and engraving, 1743. A French outdoor party of Bach's lifetime, shown for the period; no gavotte is being danced.

In the suite the gavotte was one of the optional dances, or galanteries, added to the core movements, and it could take a three-part form whose middle section was a musette over a drone bass.[2] Johann Sebastian Bach included gavottes in a number of his suites: a pair in his English Suite No. 3 for keyboard, a single gavotte in French Suite No. 5, and a pair in his Cello Suite No. 5.[3][4][5] His Partita No. 3 for solo violin, dated 1720, includes a Gavotte en rondeau, and his Orchestral Suite No. 3, from around 1730, has a paired Gavotte I and II.[6][7]

Shelley Stevens includes a Bach gavotte, which the book's listing does not identify further, in Classical Music For Mountain Dulcimer, a collection of 26 intermediate classical arrangements for solo mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[8]

Our book that contains the song "Gavotte"

Sources

  1. Online Etymology Dictionary: "Gavotte".
  2. Britannica: "Gavotte".
  3. IMSLP: "English Suite No.3 in G minor, BWV 808 (Bach, Johann Sebastian)".
  4. IMSLP: "French Suite No.5 in G major, BWV 816 (Bach, Johann Sebastian)".
  5. IMSLP: "Cello Suite No.5 in C minor, BWV 1011 (Bach, Johann Sebastian)".
  6. IMSLP: "Violin Partita No.3 in E major, BWV 1006 (Bach, Johann Sebastian)".
  7. IMSLP: "Orchestral Suite No.3 in D major, BWV 1068 (Bach, Johann Sebastian)".
  8. Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Classical Music For Mountain Dulcimer".
  9. Image: Jacques Philippe Le Bas, Gallant Conversation (Conversation Galante), etching and engraving, 1743. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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