Bergamask

The Bergamasca (also Bergamasco ) is a geradtaktiger, faster, peasant dance, the name goes back to the northern Italian city of Bergamo.

The first mention dates back to the 16th century, they have been handed down in Italian, English, French and German manuscripts. A first musical example can be found in 1564 in Il Terzo libro de intabolatura liuto di Giacomo Gorzanis or a little later, in 1569 Filippo Azzaiolo. In William Shakespeare appears in the Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 5 where a Bergomask is danced.

A certain melody of " Bergamasca " especially typical that Lodovico Grossi da Viadana composers, Salomone Rossi, Marco Uccellini, Gasparo Zanetti, Samuel Scheidt, Dietrich Buxtehude, Giovanni Battista Vitali and Valentin Rathgeber inserting - In the 17th century has been - among others. Composers such as Girolamo Frescobaldi ( 1635) or Giovanni Battista Fasolo (1645 ) composed complex contrapuntal Bergamascen, clearly leaving the field of dance music.

More examples can be found in many guitars and lute tablature of the late 16th - and 17th century.

Johann Sebastian Bach used the theme in the final Quodlibet of the Goldberg Variations, then as a popular song "higgledy-piggledy have me expelled " known.

In the 19th century a tarantellaartiger, standing in 6/8-measure dance was understood with emphasis on the second part of the bar under " Bergamasca ". Ottorino Respighi Suite 2 In the " Antiche danze et arie per liuto " from 1922, a free orchestration of lute pieces of the 16th and 17th centuries, there is a 1650 print by Bernardo Bergamasca Gianoncelli.

The name of Claude Debussy's Suite known bergamasque refers to how the Bergamasca by Alfredo Piatti, not on the dance form, but to the city of Bergamo.