Friday 14 January 2011
Tune of the Day: Two Passepieds by J.S. Bach
from Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C major
These two lively passepieds constitute the seventh and last movement of Johann Sebastian Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 1.
A passepied (which in French approximately means “passing feet”) is a dance of the baroque era that originated in Brittany, a region of western France. The music to which a passepied is set is almost always a movement in binary (AABB) form with a fast tempo and a time signature of three beats per bar (3/4 or 3/8), each section beginning with an upbeat of a single beat.