Passacaglia and Ciaccona: Genre Pairing and Ambiguity from Frescobaldi to Couperin
Silbiger, Alexander
Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, Vol. 1, No. 1(1996)
Abstract
The simultaneous survival of such closely similar genres as the ciaccona and the passacaglia can be best understood by considering them as a genre pair. The distinctions between them are subtle, involving surface features more readily perceptible by ear than by score-based analysis, while the shared features not infrequently give rise to ambiguity between members of the pair. Some composers, notably Girolamo Frescobaldi and François Couperin, seem to have been fond of playing with this ambiguity within a composition, switching back and forth between genre characteristics, or even effecting a gradual metamorphosis from one genre to the other.
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