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The gavotte (also gavot, gavote, or gavotta) is a French dance, taking its name from a folk dance of the Gavot, the people of the Pays de Gap region of
Dauphiné The Dauphiné (, ) is a former province in Southeastern France, whose area roughly corresponded to that of the present departments of Isère, Drôme and Hautes-Alpes. The Dauphiné was originally the Dauphiné of Viennois. In the 12th centu ...
in the southeast of France, where the dance originated, according to one source. According to another reference, the word ''gavotte'' is a generic term for a variety of French folk dances, and most likely originated in Lower Brittany in the west, or possibly
Provence Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east; it is bor ...
in the southeast or the
French Basque Country The French Basque Country, or Northern Basque Country ( eu, Iparralde (), french: Pays basque, es, País Vasco francés) is a region lying on the west of the French department of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. Since 1 January 2017, it constitu ...
in the southwest of France. It is notated in or
time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
and is usually of moderate
tempo In musical terminology, tempo ( Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (ofte ...
, though the folk dances also use meters such as and . In late 16th-century
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 often for display and ente ...
, the gavotte is first mentioned as the last of a suite of
branle A branle (, ), also bransle, brangle, brawl, brawle, brall(e), braul(e), brando (in Italy), bran (in Spain), or brantle (in Scotland), is a type of French dance popular from the early 16th century to the present, danced by couples in either a li ...
s. Popular at the court of
Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Ver ...
, it became one of many optional dances in the classical suite of dances. Many were composed by
Lully Jean-Baptiste Lully ( , , ; born Giovanni Battista Lulli, ; – 22 March 1687) was an Italian-born French composer, guitarist, violinist, and dancer who is considered a master of the French Baroque music style. Best known for his operas, he ...
,
Rameau Jean-Philippe Rameau (; – ) was a French composer and music theorist. Regarded as one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the 18th century, he replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and ...
and
Gluck Christoph Willibald (Ritter von) Gluck (; 2 July 1714 – 15 November 1787) was a composer of Italian and French opera in the early classical period. Born in the Upper Palatinate and raised in Bohemia, both part of the Holy Roman Empire, he g ...
, and the 17th-century cibell is a variety. The dance was popular in France throughout the 18th century and spread widely. In early courtly use the gavotte involved kissing, but this was replaced by the presentation of flowers. The gavotte of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries has nothing in common with the 19th-century column-dance called the "gavotte" but may be compared with the
rigaudon The rigaudon (also spelled rigadon, rigadoon) is a French baroque dance with a lively duple metre. The music is similar to that of a bourrée, but the rigaudon is rhythmically simpler with regular phrases (eight measure phrases are most common) ...
and the
bourrée The bourrée ( oc, borrèia; also in England, borry or bore) 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 often has a dactylic rhythm. However, it i ...
.


Etymology

The term ''gavotte'' for a lively dance originated in the 1690s from Old Provençal ''gavoto'' (mountaineer's dance) from ''gavot'', a local name for an Alpine resident, said to mean literally "boor", "glutton", from ''gaver'' (to stuff, force-feed poultry) from Old Provençal ''gava'' (crop). The word is cognate to French ''gavache'' (coward, dastard). The Italianized form is ''gavotta''.


Musical characteristics

The phrases of the 18th-century French court gavotte begin in the middle of the bar, creating a half-measure (half-bar)
upbeat Up beat may refer to: *Upbeat, in music, the last beat in the previous bar which immediately precedes the downbeat *Anacrusis, a note (or sequence of notes) which precedes the first downbeat in a bar in a musical phrase * ''Upbeat'' (album), by t ...
. However the music for the earlier court gavotte, first described by
Thoinot Arbeau Thoinot Arbeau is the anagrammatic pen name of French cleric Jehan Tabourot (March 17, 1520 – July 23, 1595). Tabourot is most famous for his ''Orchésographie'', a study of late sixteenth-century French Renaissance social dance. He was born ...
in 1589, invariably began on the downbeat of a duple measure. Later composers also wrote gavottes that began on the downbeat rather than on the half-measure: an example is Jean-Philippe Rameau's ''Gavotte Variée'' in A minor for keyboard. Various folk gavottes found in mid-20th-century Brittany are danced to music in , , , and time. In the ball-room the gavotte was often paired with a preceding triple-time
minuet A minuet (; also spelled menuet) is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in time. The English word was adapted from the Italian ''minuetto'' and the French ''menuet''. The term also describes the musical form that accomp ...
: both dances are stately, and the gavotte's lifted step contrasted with the shuffling
minuet step The minuet step is the dance step performed in the dance minuet. It "is composed of four plain straight Steps or Walks, and may be performed forwards, backward, sideways, &c." or in a square. The steps are often referred to by direction to distingu ...
. It had a steady rhythm, not broken up into faster notes. In the Baroque suite the gavotte is played after (or sometimes before) the sarabande. Like most dance movements of the Baroque period it is typically in binary form but this may be extended by a second melody in the same
metre The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...
, often one called the ''musette'', having a
pedal A pedal (from the Latin '' pes'' ''pedis'', "foot") is a lever designed to be operated by foot and may refer to: Computers and other equipment * Footmouse, a foot-operated computer mouse * In medical transcription, a pedal is used to control p ...
drone to imitate the French bagpipes, played after the first to create a grand
ternary form Ternary form, sometimes called song form, is a three-part musical form consisting of an opening section (A), a following section (B) and then a repetition of the first section (A). It is usually schematized as A–B–A. Prominent examples inclu ...
; A–(A)–B–A. There is a ''Gavotte en Rondeau'' ("Gavotte in
rondo The rondo is an instrumental musical form introduced in the Classical period. Etymology The English word ''rondo'' comes from the Italian form of the French ''rondeau'', which means "a little round". Despite the common etymological root, rondo ...
form") in
J.S. Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wor ...
's
Partita Partita (also ''partie'', ''partia'', ''parthia'', or ''parthie'') was originally the name for a single-instrumental piece of music (16th and 17th centuries), but Johann Kuhnau (Thomaskantor until 1722), his student Christoph Graupner, and Johann ...
No. 3 in E Major for solo violin, BWV 1006. The gavotte could be played at a variety of '' tempi'':
Johann Gottfried Walther Johann Gottfried Walther (18 September 1684 – 23 March 1748) was a German music theorist, organist, composer, and lexicographer of the Baroque era. Walther was born at Erfurt. Not only was his life almost exactly contemporaneous to that ...
wrote that the gavotte is "often quick but occasionally slow".


Renaissance

The gavotte is first described in the late 16th century as a suite or miscellany of double branles danced in a line or circle to music in duple time, "with little springs in the manner of the Haut Barrois" branle and with some of the steps "divided" with figures borrowed from the
galliard The ''galliard'' (; french: gaillarde; it, gagliarda) was a form of Renaissance dance and music popular all over Europe in the 16th century. It is mentioned in dance manuals from England, Portugal, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy. Dance f ...
. The basic gavotte step, as described by Arbeau, is that of the common or double branle, a line of dancers moving alternately to the left and right with a ''double à gauche'' and ''double à droite'', each requiring a count of four. In the double branle these composite steps consist of; a ''pied largi'' (firm outward step), a ''pied approche'' (the other foot drawn near to the first), another ''pied largi'' and a ''pied joint'' (the other foot drawn against the first). In the gavotte's ''double à gauche'' a skip (''petit saut'') is inserted after each of the four components; the second ''pied largi'' is replaced by a ''marque pied croisé'' (the following foot crosses over the left with toe contacting the floor); the final ''pied approche'' is replaced by a ''grève croisée'' (the right foot crosses over the left, raised). The ''double à droite'' begins with a ''pieds joints'' and ''petit saut'', followed by two quick steps, a ''marque pied gauche croisé'' and ''marque pied droit croisé'', during beat two, a ''grève droit croisée'' and ''petit saut'' on beat three and on the last beat ''pieds joints'' and a ''capriole'' (leap into the air with entrechat).


Baroque

The gavotte became popular in the court of
Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Ver ...
where Jean-Baptiste Lully was the leading court composer.
Gaétan Vestris Gaetano Apolline Baldassarre Vestris (18 April 1729 – 1808), French ballet dancer, was born in Florence and made his debut at the opera in 1749. Life Born of an Italian theatrical family, he studied dance with Louis Dupré at the Royal Acad ...
did much to define the dance. Subsequently many composers of the Baroque period incorporated the dance as one of many optional additions to the standard instrumental suite of the era. The examples in suites and partitas by
Johann Sebastian Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wo ...
are well known. Movements of early 18th-century musical works entitled ''Tempo di gavotta'' sometimes indicated the sense of a gavotte rhythm or movement, without fitting the number of measures or strains typical of the actual dance. Examples of these can be found in the works of
Arcangelo Corelli Arcangelo Corelli (, also , , ; 17 February 1653 – 8 January 1713) was an Italian composer and violinist of the Baroque era. His music was key in the development of the modern genres of sonata and concerto, in establishing the preeminence of th ...
or
Johann Sebastian Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wo ...
. George Frideric Handel wrote a number of gavottes, including the fifth-and-final movement, Allegro, of the Concerto Grosso in B-flat major, Op. 3, No. 2 – HWV 313.


Later examples

Composers in the 19th century wrote gavottes that began, like the 16th-century gavotte, on the downbeat rather than on the half-measure upbeat. The famous Gavotte in D by Gossec is such an example, as is the Gavotte in Massenet's ''Manon'' but not the one in Ambroise Thomas's ''
Mignon ''Mignon'' is an 1866 ''opéra comique'' (or opera in its second version) in three acts by Ambroise Thomas. The original French libretto was by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on Goethe's 1795-96 novel '' Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre''. ...
''. A gavotte also occurs in the second act of ''
The Gondoliers ''The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria'' is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 7 December 1889 and ran for a very successful 554 performances (at that time the ...
'' and the act 1 finale of ''
Ruddigore ''Ruddigore; or, The Witch's Curse'', originally called ''Ruddygore'', is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy Operas and the tenth of fourteen comic operas written tog ...
'', both by Gilbert and Sullivan. Edvard Grieg 's suite, '' From Holberg's Time'', based on eighteenth-century dance forms, features a "Gavotte", as its third movement (1884). Australian composer Fred Werner used a gavotte he composed for teaching students. Igor Stravinsky's ballet ''
Pulcinella Pulcinella (; nap, Pulecenella) is a classical character that originated in of the 17th century and became a stock character in Neapolitan puppetry. Pulcinella's versatility in status and attitude has captivated audiences worldwide and kept t ...
'' features a "Gavotta con due variazioni", as number 18, and movement VI in the suite (1922).
Sergei Prokofiev Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev; alternative transliterations of his name include ''Sergey'' or ''Serge'', and ''Prokofief'', ''Prokofieff'', or ''Prokofyev''., group=n (27 April .S. 15 April1891 – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, ...
employs a gavotte instead of a minuet in his Symphony No. 1 (''Classical''), Op. 25 (1917), and includes another one as the third of his Ten Piano Pieces Op. 12 (1913), and another as the third of his Four Piano Pieces, Op. 32 (1918). Leonard Bernstein's '' Candide'' has a "Venice Gavotte" in act 2. "The Ascot Gavotte" is a song in the 1956 musical ''
My Fair Lady ''My Fair Lady'' is a musical based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play '' Pygmalion'', with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The story concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons ...
'' by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe.


References in popular culture

* Early 20th century musician
Samuel Siegel Samuel Siegel (born 1875, Des Moines, Iowa — died January 14, 1948, Los Angeles, California) was an American mandolin virtuoso and composer who played mandolin on 29 records for Victor Records, including 9 pieces of his own composition and tw ...
recorded a
ragtime Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott J ...
mandolin tune "Gavotte". * Carly Simon's song "
You're So Vain "You're So Vain" is a song written in 1971 by American singer and songwriter Carly Simon and released in November 1972. It is one of the songs with which Simon is most identified, and upon its release, reached No. 1 in the United States, Canada, ...
" includes the lyric "You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte". In this context it means "moving in a pretentious manner". * The Stephen Sondheim musical '' Sunday in the Park with George'' uses the word ''gavotte'' as a satirical device in the otherwise irregular, non-steadily rhythmical, song "It's Hot Up Here" to start the second act, "We're stuck up here in this gavotte". * The Johnny Mercer song "Strip Polka" includes the lyric "Oh, she hates corny waltzes and she hates the gavotte". * Geneticist
W. D. Hamilton William Donald Hamilton (1 August 1936 – 7 March 2000) was a British evolutionary biologist, recognised as one of the most significant evolutionary theorists of the 20th century. Hamilton became known for his theoretical work expounding a ...
in his paper "Gamblers since life began: barnacles, aphids, elms." in ''
The Quarterly Review of Biology ''The Quarterly Review of Biology'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of biology. It was established in 1926 by Raymond Pearl. In the 1960s it was purchased by the Stony Brook Foundation when the editor H. Bentley Glass be ...
'' (1975) referred to the drilled formality of the mechanisms of individual reproduction as "the gavotte of chromosomes". * Philosopher Stephen David Ross characterises metaphysical
aporia In philosophy, an aporia ( grc, ᾰ̓πορῐ́ᾱ, aporíā, literally: "lacking passage", also: "impasse", "difficulty in passage", "puzzlement") is a conundrum or state of puzzlement. In rhetoric, it is a declaration of doubt, made for ...
as "the disruptive side of a tradition that needs both repetition and its annihilation for intelligibility. It is a site at which same and other dance their unending gavotte of life and death." *
Agustín Barrios Agustín Pío Barrios (also known as Agustín Barrios Mangoré and Nitsuga—Agustin spelled backward—Mangoré; May 5, 1885 – August 7, 1944) was a Paraguayan virtuoso classical guitarist and composer, largely regarded as one of the greatest p ...
wrote a solo guitar piece, "Madrigal Gavotte", which is a combination of the two styles. * In the anime ''Kiniro no Corda'' ('' La Corda d'Oro''), "Gavotte in D" by Gossec is heard many times, though referred to only as "Gavotte". * In the novel ''
Good Omens ''Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch'' is a 1990 novel written as a collaboration between the English authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The book is a comedy about the birth of the son of Satan and the c ...
'', it is noted that one cannot determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, because angels do not dance—the exception being the Principality Aziraphale, who once learned to do the gavotte. *The "Cutting Gavotte" is an attack in the Japanese version of the role-playing game ''Infinite Undiscovery''. *In the Broadway musical ''
1776 Events January–February * January 1 – American Revolutionary War – Burning of Norfolk: The town of Norfolk, Virginia is destroyed, by the combined actions of the British Royal Navy and occupying Patriot forces. * Januar ...
'' during the song "Cool, Considerate Men", reference is made to "Mr. Adams' new gavotte"—a reference regarding
John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before his presidency, he was a leader of t ...
' ideas for a declaration of independence from
Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...
. *In the 1967 film, ''
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying ''How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying'' may refer to: * ''How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying'' (book), a 1952 book written by Shepherd Mead and the inspiration for the musical of the same name. * ''How to Succeed in Bu ...
'', the song "A Secretary Is not a Toy" refers to a gavotte. The song discourages personal indiscretions with secretaries at the firm. The reference to a gavotte is meant to be ironic, as the original dance accompanying the song from the Broadway show was a modified gavotte. *In the manga and anime ''
One Piece ''One Piece'' (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda. It has been serialized in Shueisha's ''shōnen'' manga magazine '' Weekly Shōnen Jump'' since July 1997, with its individual cha ...
'', the skeleton musician character Brooke (and his "zombie," Ryuuma, which was given life by Brooke's shadow) has a signature technique, ''Gavotte Bond en Avant''. *In the
Robert Pinsky Robert Pinsky (born October 20, 1940) is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most o ...
poem "Impossible To Tell", the gavotte is mentioned in the first line. *In John Updike's novel '' Bech at Bay'', for the protagonist, "It embarrassed him that for these young Czechs American writing, its square dance of lame old names, should appear such a lively gavotte, prancing carefree into the future." *In the mid-nineteenth-century novel ''The Scout'', William Gilmore Simms describes a lonely sentry: "He sang, and whistled, and soliloquized; and, not unfrequently, relieved the dull measured step of the sentinel by the indulgence of such a gavotte as a beef-eating British soldier of the 'prince's own' might be supposed capable of displaying in that period of buckram movement." * Describing American foreign policy in the wake of the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
, author
Norman Podhoretz Norman Podhoretz (; born January 16, 1930) is an American magazine editor, writer, and conservative political commentator, who identifies his views as " paleo-neoconservative".
says, "Far from 'rushing into war,' we were spending months dancing a diplomatic gavotte in the vain hope of enlisting the help of France, Germany, and Russia." * Polish resistance fighter Jan Kamieński describes his personal experience of the chaos of the first German air strike on Poland in these terms: "Paintings were falling off the walls, the Biedermeier sofa and its complement of chairs bounced around as if dancing some crazy gavotte, the Bechnstein grand piano slid past me on two of its casters …". * The poem "Wakefulness" by John Ashbery includes the sentence: "A gavotte of dust-motes / came to replace my seeing." *In the poem "12/2/80" from ''Waltzing Matilda'' (1981),
Alice Notley Alice Notley (born November 8, 1945) is an American poet. Notley came to prominence as a member of the second generation of the New York School of poetry—although she has always denied being involved with the New York School or any specific mo ...
writes: "A leaf if local / only when falling. // 'What? like a gavotte?' / the common evergreen rustle: / hours & regulations & so on ...", * Chas and Dave produced a song called ''Give it Gavotte'' which uses this style on the album '' Job Lot'' * In the book Good Omens by Terry Prattchet one of the characters, angel Aziraphale had learned a dance called the gavotte in a discreet gentlemen's club in Portland Place in the late 1880s


References


Further reading

*Guilcher, Jean-Michel. 1963. ''La tradition populaire de danse en Basse-Bretagne''. Etudes Européennes 1. Paris and The Hague: Mouton. Second edition, 1976, Paris: Mouton. . New, expanded edition, 1995, Spézet-Douarnenez: Coop-Breizh. . Douarnenez: Chasse-Marée-Armen. . Reprinted 1997. *Semmens, Richard T. 1997. "Branles, Gavottes and Contredanses in the Later Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries". ''Dance Research'' 15, no. 2 (Winter): 35–62.


External links

* * * * * {{Authority control French dances French music history Breton dances Baroque dance Renaissance music Baroque music Dance forms in classical music