Originally the gavotte consisted of four bars in the first part and eight bars in the second; but if the gavotte is only one of various parts of a suite, no fixed number of bars is given. Now, as a general rule, the gavotte begins on the third beat of the bar, so that you will see, if you calculate, that each part must finish with a half-bar containing a minim, not two crotchets.
I know that to many of my young readers this may sound very dull and useless; but if you will only give a little careful study to a few rules which apply to your first "pieces," lessons in real harmony and thorough-bass will seem much more interesting to you later on. The chaconne and the passacaille, the passaglia and the sarabande, are all dances of about the same period as the gavotte, and have certain governing principles. The chaconne is slow, and is usually written in the major key. This is always a semitone greater than the minor.
The passacaille is written in the minor key. What is called the theme[1] in the chaconne is invariably in the bass; in the passacaille it may be in any part. The passacaille has a very curious kind of interest, since in the last century composers made use of it to show their skill—what is known as contrapuntal skill. It must consist of a short theme of two, four, or eight bars. Bach, Frescobaldi, and Handel all wrote famous passacailles.
The sarabande is more stately in its movement. It was a popular dance in the sixteenth century, and some say it was introduced then by a famous dancer called Varatanda. I think that it might often have formed part of very picturesque scenes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when people were full of a certain kind of poetry, and enjoyed whatever was splendid and stately. Sometimes dancers were hired to perform it; sometimes ladies and gentlemen of quality danced it for their sovereign.
Old songs are full of references to sarabandes as being danced at times when sadness or even deep regret filled the minds of the performers; so that we may picture it as a slow, pathetic movement, with melancholy and sweetness in its train.
And from these dances of olden time we come to a great name—to the story of a great man who wrote, amidst hundreds of finer things, the most exquisite gavottes, chaconnes, and passacailles that we know. I mean John Sebastian Bach.
In a certain part of Germany lived the Bach family, famous for generations for their musical ability. Finally we hear of one of them living in the quaint town of Eisenach, and having a little son named John Sebastian, who from his tiniest years glowed with musical fire. All the genius of that family seemed to have taken root in him, yet when his father died, his elder brother, with whom the boy lived, seemed to think it better for him not to study.
Well, little John Sebastian craved music. I fancy the house in Eisenach in the year 1695 was very dull. German children then as now were kept very strictly, and when the elder brother forbade music to the little boy, he did not know the pain he was inflicting.
