Talk:Gavotte

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A possibly useful link that includes an overview of the development of the gavotte from the late-16th to mid-18th-century: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/lod/vol3/gavotte.html. It's very bare-bones, but accurate as far as I know. -Insouciance 10:10, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

It would be nice to have some details of the dance, rather than just the music as at present. 74.111.24.216 (talk) 20:29, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Excellent point. I have made a start, with respect to the 16th-century form of the gavotte.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:15, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

16th c. gavottes
For what it's worth Thoinot Arbeau in Orchesography (1589) gives a description of the dance, though not as detailed as we'd wish. He says it's dance like the double branle but with little hops like the "Haut Barrois". Variations using galliard steps were also done. Sometimes a couple would detach itself and show off their skill; after which they'd kiss every person of the opposite sex. --Mariannep 18:13, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

This page should disassociate the Gavotte (breton dance) from Gavotte (renaissance dance and dance music). The rythmic patterns just aren't identical —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.171.17.11 (talk) 20:41, 3 October 2008 (UTC)


 * These things have now at last been attended to (at least, a start has been made).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:15, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

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Reasons I've removed remainder of earlier comments by me someone partly removed earlier.
A few years ago, I added some information to this article about gavottes as they appeared in the 19th and 20th centuries. Time went by, and I largely forgot the article - but I have just noticed that most - but not quite all - of what I wrote was removed a couple of years later.

I have just removed the remainder of what I wrote, because the previous edit changed my one remaining sentence into an incorrect statement.

It's a bit of a problem: all of what I wrote was absolutely true, and I believe it gave valuable information about gavottes of the 19th-20th century period. I have hundreds of scores of piano pieces from this period, and it includes possible over a dozen gavottes by various composers - enough that I could see a pattern. The problem is that, although I am extremely familiar with piano music of this period, and have a good understanding of music theory through which to interpret things, I do not have an extensive *formal* music education, and so did not have knowledge of the appropriate books to cite as references for what I wrote.

This appears to be the reason why most of my comments were removed. It is a pity that someone with greater knowledge of the written literature or commentary about music could not have found and added references instead of just removing valuable information that I supplied. I know that what I said was completely true by reference to actual scores of gavottes - but I would not have the faintest idea where to begin searching for corroboration of this in music books - otherwise I would have supplied the references.

Just in case someone thinks I illegitimately removed my own earlier statement (which the earlier editor apparently saw fit to leave in), and tries to reinstate it, I wish to explain the exact reason why I've removed my remaining statement. I would actually prefer to reinstate my full comments, but I suppose someone would just remove them again, for the same reason. I give up trying to contribute to this; but I do not wish any remaining statement of mine to be misleading - to be completely false, in fact.

Here is the original passage as it stood immediately after I added my comments:


 * Later composers, particularly in the nineteenth 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.  A gavotte also occurs in the second act of The Gondoliers by Gilbert and Sullivan and the Finale of the First Act of Ruddigore also by Gilbert and Sullivan.


 * Late in the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, composers especially of piano music began to write self-contained gavottes in Scherzo and Trio form, in which the section that would normally be labelled "Trio" is instead labelled "Musette". Sometimes these works are called simply "Gavotte", and sometimes "Gavotte and Musette".


 * In each work of this type, the first section is a complete gavotte, usually in the traditional binary form, and the second section marked "Musette" is simply another gavotte, usually also in binary form, and usually in either a different key or the same key but of opposite mode (major instead of minor, or vice-versa).


 * The Musette section's distinguishing feature is that the left-hand part features prolonged pedal points for much or even all of its duration, which attempt to mimic the drones of bagpipes. (The musette was a variety of bagpipe, and also a dance form.)  These pedal points consist of either prolonged or repeated bass notes, usually on the tonic note of the Musette section.


 * At the end of the Musette, the Gavotte is usually written out again instead of indicated by the instruction "D.C." (Da capo), because of changes the composer wishes to introduce in the reappearance of the Gavotte section.


 * These works are usually in a late romantic 19th-century style which may occasionally introduce elements of early 20th-century-style harmony, but, in keeping with the origins of the gavotte, it usually also evokes elements of the Baroque style, often with some liberty.


 * Examples of gavottes of this type exist by Giovanni Sgambati, Eugen d'Albert, Arthur Benjamin (subtitled "Chinoiserie"), and Una Bourne (an early Australian composer).

Of these 7 paragraphs, I wrote all but the first; I left the first in my quotation here for reasons which will become obvious in a moment. The editor who removed my comments removed paragraphs 2 - 5.

This makes the last paragraph completely false. The examples of gavottes by Sgambati, d'Albert, Benjamin, and Bourne are of "this type"; but "this type" refers to the style of Gavotte with Musette that I described just before. Since this has been removed, it causes "this type" in my statement now to refer to the type of gavotte described in paragraph 1 above - which is not true: the four gavottes I cited (and dozens of others from the same period) are absolutely *not* of the type mentioned in paragraph 1, which my remaining sentence now claimed (before I just removed it), owing to the deleted intervening comments.

So if anyone is tempted to reinstate my one remark that the earlier editor apparently considered acceptable, please consider this before doing so.

Meanwhile, I think it is a pity that the "gavotte with musette" style of gavotte, an important variety of gavotte, just cannot be mentioned here (apparently) simply because I don't know the right books to cite. (To the person who added the "citation needed" tags, I say: go and check the actual piano literature! It's there in black and white - in those four gavottes I named, for a start.) M.J.E. (talk) 16:41, 29 June 2013 (UTC)