Chaconne

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In music, a chaconne (IPA: [ʃaˈkɔn]; Italian: ciaccona) is a musical form whose primary formal feature involves variation on a repeated short harmonic progression.

Originally a quick dance-song which emerged during the late 16th century in Spanish culture, possibly from the New World, the chaconne was characterized by suggestive movements and mocking texts.[1]. By the early eighteenth century the chaconne had evolved into a slow triple meter musical form. The chaconne has been understood by some nineteenth and early twentieth-century theorists—in a rather arbitrary way—to be a set of variations on a harmonic progression, as opposed to a set of variations on a melodic bass pattern (to which is likewise artificially assigned the term passacaglia),[2] while other theorists of the same period make the distinction the other way around.[3] In actual usage in music history, the term "chaconne" has not been so clearly distinguished from passacaglia as regards the way the given piece of music is constructed, and "modern attempts to arrive at a clear distinction are arbitrary and historically unfounded."[4] In fact, the two genres were sometimes combined in a single composition, as in the Cento partite sopra passacaglia by Girolamo Frescobaldi, and the first suite of Les Nations (1726) as well as in the Pièces de Violes (1728) by François Couperin.[5]

Frescobaldi, who was probably the first composer to treat the chaconne and passacaglia comparatively, usually (but not always) sets the former in major key, with two compound triple-beat groups per variation, giving his chaconne a more propulsive forward motion than his passacaglia, which usually has four simple triple-beat groups per variation.[6] Both are usually in triple meter, begins on the second beat of the bar, and has a theme of four measures (or a close multiple thereof). (In more recent times the chaconne, like the passacaglia, need not be in 3/4 time.)[citation needed]

If we accept the distinction of a chaconne as variations on a harmonic progression, often this harmonic progression may involve a recurrent bass line (ground bass), but this bass line—let alone the chords involved—may not always be present in exactly the same manner, although the general outlines remain understood. (Handel's "Chaconne" in G minor for keyboard[7] has only the faintest relationship to the understood form.[citation needed]) The ground bass, if there is one, may typically descend stepwise from the tonic to the dominant pitch of the scale, or the harmony may emphasize the circle of fifths or a derivative pattern thereof.

One of the best known and most masterful and expressive examples of the chaconne is the final movement from the Violin Partita in D minor by Johann Sebastian Bach. This 256-measure chaconne takes a plaintive four-bar phrase through a continuous kaleidoscope of musical expression, in both major and minor modes.

After the baroque period, the chaconne fell into decline, though the 32 Variations in C minor by Ludwig van Beethoven belong to the form.

[edit] Examples of chaconnes

[edit] References

  1. ^ Alexander Silbiger, "Chaconne", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001).
  2. ^ Percy Goetschius, The Larger Forms of Musical Composition: An Exhaustive Explanation of the Variations, Rondos, and Sonata Designs, for the General Student of Musical Analysis, and for the Special Student of Structural Composition ([New York]: G. Schirmer, 1915), 29 and 40.
  3. ^ Lucas, Clarence Lucas, 1908. The Story of Musical Form (The Music Story Series, edited by Frederick J. Crowest. London: The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd.; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 203.
  4. ^ Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era (New York: Norton, 1947), 42.
  5. ^ Alexander Silbiger, "Passacaglia and Ciaccona: Genre Pairing and Ambiguity from Frescobaldi to Couperin", Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 2, no. 1 (1996).
  6. ^ Alexander Silbiger, "Chaconne" The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001).
  7. ^ Händel, Georg Friedrich. "Chaconne," Klavierwerke / Keyboard Works IV. Einzelne Suiten und Stücke / Miscellaneious Suites and Pieces. Zweite Folge / Second Part. Herausgebegen von / Edited by Terence Best. Kassel: Bärenreiter, c1975, pp. 47-49.
  8. ^ Budd Udell, "Standard Works for Band: Gustav Holst's First Suite in E♭ Major for Military Band." Music Educators Journal 69, no. 4 (1982):28 (JSTOR subscription access); Pam Hurry, Mark Phillips, and Mark Richards, http://books.google.com/books?id=YIjzx6AoIvYC&dq=%22heinemann+advanced+music%22&pg=PP1&ots=IPaNnoQ9uB&sig=o4zmgPlleUZoxfw3OMYxyw8RTAI&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=Heinemann+Advanced+Music&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail Heinemann Advanced Music] (Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 2001. ISBN 0435812580): 238; Clarence Lucas, The Story of Musical Form (The Music Story Series, edited by Frederick J. Crowest. London: The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd.; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908): 203.

[edit] External links