Chaconne

Chaconne

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Chaconne

In music, a chaconne (; ) 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, begin on the second beat of the bar, and have 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.)

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.) 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.

Examples of chaconnes

John Adams: second movement Chaconne: Body through which the dream flows from Violin Concerto (1993)
Johann Sebastian Bach: Chaconne from Partita No. 2 for Solo Violin in D minor
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98, finale
Benjamin Britten: "Chacony", third movement of the String Quartet No. 2, in C (1946)
Dietrich Buxtehude: Organ chaconne in E minor (BuxWV 160), symphonic orchestration (1937) by Carlos Chavez.
Dietrich Buxtehude: Prelude, Fugue, and Chaconne in C Major (BuxWV 137)
John Corigliano: Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra
François Couperin: La Favorite, Chaconne a deux tems, Troisième ordre.
Philip Glass: Echorus for two violins and string orchestra (1995)
Philip Glass: Symphony No. 3, third, slow movement (1995)
George Frideric Handel: Chaconne from Suite in G minor for clavier
Gustav Holst: Chaconne from First Suite in E-flat major for Military Band (according to one writer, technically a passacaglia, but according to others, technically a chaconne)^[8]
Jean-Baptiste Lully: Chaconne from Phaëton (1683)
Marin Marais: Chaconne in G major, for two violas da gamba and continuo, no. 47 from the Première Livre de pièces de violes (1686?89)
Marin Marais: Chaconne, from Suite no. 1 in C major in the Pièces en trio pour les flûtes, violon, et dessus de violes (1692)
Marin Marais: Chaconne, from the Suitte d'un goût Etranger, from the [Quatrième Livre de] Pièces à une et à trois violes (1717)
Carl Nielsen: Chaconne, op. 32, for piano (1916?17)
Johann Pachelbel: Canon in D (see that article for more examples using the chord progression of Pachelbel's Canon)
Henry Purcell: Chacony for strings and continuo in G minor Z.730 (1680)
Jean-Philippe Rameau: L'hymen - Chaconne, Scene VI from Les fêtes d'Hébé (1739)
Tomaso Antonio Vitali: Chaconne in G minor for Solo Violin (a 19th century musical hoax)