The gigue (; ) or giga () is a lively

baroque dance Baroque dance is dance of the Baroque era (roughly 1600–1750), closely linked with Baroque music, theatre, and opera. English country dance The majority of surviving choreographies from the period are English country dances, such as those i ...

originating from the English

jig The jig ( ga, port, gd, port-cruinn) is a form of lively folk dance in compound metre, as well as the accompanying dance tune. It is most associated with Irish music and dance. It first gained popularity in 16th-century Ireland and parts of ...

. It was imported into France in the mid-17th centuryBellingham, Jane
"gigue."
''The Oxford Companion to Music''. Ed. Alison Latham. Oxford Music Online. 6 July 2008 and usually appears at the end of a suite. The gigue was probably never a court dance, but it was danced by nobility on social occasions and several court composers wrote gigues.Louis Horst, ''Pre-Classic Dance Forms'', (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Book Company, 1987), 54–60. A gigue is usually in or in one of its compound metre derivatives, such as , , or , although there are some gigues written in other metres, as for example the gigue from

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 ...

's first ''French Suite'' (BWV 812), which is written in and has a distinctive strutting "dotted" rhythm. Gigues often have a

contrapuntal In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...

texture as well as often having accents on the third beats in the bar, making the gigue a lively folk dance. In early French theatre, it was customary to end a play's performance with a gigue, complete with music and dancing. A gigue, like other Baroque dances, consists of two sections. Gigue dance pattern 2

Etymology

An early Italian dance called the ''giga'' probably derives its name from a small accompanying stringed instrument called the

giga Giga ( or ) is a unit prefix in the metric system denoting a factor of a short-scale billion or long-scale milliard (109 or ). It has the symbol G. ''Giga'' is derived from the Greek word (''gígas''), meaning "giant". The ''Oxford English Dic ...

. Historians, such as Charles Read Baskerville, claim that use of the word in relation to dancing took place in England prior to such usage on the Continent. ''Giga'' probably has a separate etymology.

Cultural references

Jonathan Littell Jonathan Littell (born October 10, 1967) is a writer living in Barcelona. He grew up in France and the United States and is a citizen of both countries. After acquiring his bachelor's degree he worked for a humanitarian organisation for nine year ...

's novel '' The Kindly Ones'' is structured in different parts, each one of these named after a Baroque dance, the last part being called ''Gigue''.

Etymology

Cultural references

See also

References

Further reading