''Piva'' is an Italian

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

dance Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

that may have originated from a peasant dance to the accompaniment of

bagpipes Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Great Highland bagpipes are well known, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, No ...

. In 15th-century sources it is described as the fastest version of the

basse danse The ''basse danse'', or "low dance", was a popular court dance in the 15th and early 16th centuries, especially at the Burgundian court. The word ''basse'' describes the nature of the dance, in which partners move quietly and gracefully in a s ...

Antonio Cornazzano Antonio Cornazzano (c. 1430 in Piacenza – 1484 in Ferrara) was an Italian poet, writer, biographer, and dancing master. Biography In the city of Piacenza, which was then in the Duchy of Milan, Antonio Cornazzano was born probably in 1432. H ...

, for example, in his ''Libro del'arte del danzare'' (ca. 1455), explains that the music for the piva was also called ''cacciata'', was in quadruple time beginning on the downbeat and was twice as fast as music for the basse danse . The term appeared also in the 16th century, applied to compositions for

lute A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lute" can ref ...

. The pivas in

Joan Ambrosio Dalza Joan Ambrosio Dalza (fl. 1508) was a Milanese lutenist and composer. His surviving works comprise the fourth volume of Ottaviano Petrucci's influential series of lute music publications, ''Intabolatura de lauto libro quarto'' (Venice, 1508). Dalza i ...

's 1508 lute collection are very repetitive pieces in quick triple time, with no clearly defined structure. However, it may not be accurate to describe them as being in triple time, since the fast triple rhythmic groupings do not represent one bar each, but rather single beats divided into triplets, just like

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 bo ...

's ''mesure ternaire'' for the basse danse .

References

Further reading