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French Suite no. 5 – Allemande
French Suite no. 5 – Courante
French Suite no. 5 – Sarabande
French Suite no. 5 – Gavotte
French Suite no. 5 – Bourrée
French Suite no. 5 – Loure
French Suite no. 5 – Gigue
This is the fourth movement of Johann Sebastian Bach’s French Suite no. 5 in G major, played on piano. It is a ‘Gavotte’: The gavotte is a historical French dance in two-part time signature with up-beat.
The name gavotte was originally a nickname for the inhabitants of the French Alps; the word is a derivation of the Occitan gava (= goiter). Goiters were common among Alpine residents in the past. This dance originates from their region.
In the seventeenth and especially the eighteenth century, the gavotte became a popular dance among the French nobility and classical composers also started to write gavottes. The dance was practically the same as the bourree, the difference was generally in a slightly faster tempo and a more erratic melody. In addition to the music intended for dance, the gavotte also occurs frequently in suites, sequences of pieces based on stylized dances.
