Gigue

The gigue (/ʒiːɡ/; French pronunciation: ​[ʒiɡ]) or giga (Italian: [ˈdʒiːɡa]) is a lively baroque dance originating from the British jig. It was imported into France in the mid-17th century and usually appears at the end of a suite. The gigue was probably never a court dance, but it was danced by nobility on social occasions and several court composers wrote gigues.

A gigue is usually in 3
8 or in one of its compound metre derivatives, such as 6
8, 6
4, 9
8 or 12
8, although there are some gigues written in other metres, as for example the gigue from Johann Sebastian Bach's first French Suite (BWV 812), which is written in 2
2.

It often has a contrapuntal texture. It often has accents on the third beats in the bar, making the gigue a lively folk dance.

In early French theatre, it was customary to end a play's performance with a gigue, complete with music and dancing.

A gigue, like other Baroque dances, consists of two sections. In Bach's gigues, each section often begins as a fugue, in which the theme used in the first section is inverted in the second section, as for example in the gigue from Bach's third English Suite.

Hilary Hahn

Hilary Hahn (born November 27, 1979) is an American violinist. In her active international career she has performed throughout the world both as a soloist with leading orchestras and conductors and as a recitalist. She also has built a reputation for championing contemporary music. Several composers have written works specially for her, including concerti by Edgar Meyer and Jennifer Higdon.

Early life and education

Hahn was born in Lexington, Virginia. She began playing the violin one month before her fourth birthday in the Suzuki Program of Baltimore's Peabody Institute. She participated in a Suzuki class for a year. Between 1984 and 1989 Hahn studied in Baltimore under Klara Berkovich. In 1990, at ten, Hahn was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where she became a student of Jascha Brodsky. Hahn studied with Brodsky for seven years and learned the études of Kreutzer, Ševčík, Gaviniès, Rode, and the Paganini Caprices. She learned twenty-eight violin concertos, as well as recital programs, chamber works, and assorted showpieces.

Il Giardino Armonico

Il Giardino Armonico ("The Garden of Harmony") is a pioneering Italian early music ensemble founded in Milan in 1985 by Luca Pianca and Giovanni Antonini, primarily to play 17th- and 18th-century music on period instruments.

Il Giardino Armonico performs with soloists such as the mezzosoprano Cecilia Bartoli, duo pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque, cellist Christophe Coin, and soprano Danielle de Niese. Its recordings have met with honors including the Gramophone and Grammy Awards. Il Giardino Armonico performs both in concerts and in opera stage productions of works such as by Monteverdi, Handel, Pergolesi and Vivaldi. In 2014, the ensemble commenced a project aiming to perform and record all of Joseph Haydn's symphonies by 2032, the 300th anniversary of the composer's birth.

References

External links

Media related to Il Giardino Armonico at Wikimedia Commons