gavotte

The opening of Bach's gavotte from his French Suite no. 5

Light-hearted dance in common time (4/4), originating from the Pays de Gap, France, whose inhabitants were called Gavots. Originally a folk dance, it was adopted by the court and continued to develop ever more complicated steps until it could only be performed by professional dancers. The music begins with an upbeat of two crotchets, and the phrases usually begin and end in the middle of each bar. It became popular at the court of Louis XIV (Jean-Baptiste Lully composed several gavottes), later becoming an optional movement of the baroque suite. The gavotte was revived by some 20th-century composers, including Prokofiev and Schoenberg, who used one in his Suite (1934).