Gigue

The gigue (/ʒiːɡ/; French pronunciation: ​) or giga (Italian: ) is a lively baroque dance originating from the Irish 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. The gigue (/ʒiːɡ/; French pronunciation: ​) or giga (Italian: ) is a lively baroque dance originating from the Irish 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 38 or in one of its compound metre derivatives, such as 68, 64, 98 or 128, 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 22. 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 in the gigue from the third English Suite. An early Italian dance called the giga probably derives its name from a small accompanying stringed instrument called the giga. Historians, such as Charles Read Baskerville, claim that use of the word in relation to dancing took place in England prior to such usage on the Continent. Giga probably has a separate etymology. Jonathan Littell's novel The Kindly Ones is structured in different parts, each one of these named after a Baroque dance, the last part being called Gigue.