The loure, also known as the

gigue The gigue ( , ) or giga () is a lively baroque dance originating from the English jig. 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 ...

lourée or gigue lente (slow gigue), is a French

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 in ...

, probably originating in

Normandy Normandy (; or ) is a geographical and cultural region in northwestern Europe, roughly coextensive with the historical Duchy of Normandy. Normandy comprises Normandy (administrative region), mainland Normandy (a part of France) and insular N ...

and named after the sound of the instrument of the same name (a type of '' musette''). It is of slow or moderate tempo, sometimes in simple triple meter but more often in compound duple meter. The weight is on the first beat, a characteristic emphasised by the preceding

anacrusis In poetic and musical meter, and by analogy in publishing, an anacrusis (from , , literally: 'pushing up', plural ''anacruses'') is a brief introduction. In music, it is also known as a pickup beat, or fractional pick-up, i.e. a note or seque ...

, which begins the traditional loure. Another feature is the lilting dotted rhythm. In his ''Musicalisches Lexicon'' (Leipzig, 1732),

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. Life and work Walther was born at Erfurt. Not only was his life almost exactly contempor ...

wrote that the loure "is slow and ceremonious; the first note of each half-measure is dotted which should be well observed".Bach. ''The French Suites: Embellished version''. Barenreiter Urtext Examples of loures are found in the works of Lully (e.g., '' Alceste''), Rameau (e.g. Les Indes galantes) and of

Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (German: �joːhan zeˈbasti̯an baχ ( – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the or ...

(e.g.: ''French Suite'' No. 5 and the Partita No. 3 for violin solo).

References

External links

Bach's Partita No. 3 in E major played by Hilary Hahn
at youtube.com

* Baroque dance Baroque music Dance forms in classical music French dances {{Europe-dance-stub