Another lesson, another gavotte – I told Teacher yesterday that I’m trying to get into the gavotte groove rhythmically – feel the gavotte.  The French dance form is now represented in three pieces I’m playing – Gavotte by Gossec, Gavotte from Mignon, by Thomas, and the new Gavotte by Lully.  All three are indeed French, though I’m enjoying learning about Jean Baptiste Lully just this morning – according to Wikipekia he emigrated from Italy to France and became a court musician for Louis XIV, eventually becoming a French subject in 1661.

These gavottes are the only French music I’ve played (Schumann includes the theme from the French national anthem in The Two Grenadiers, but that does not really count), so I’m only slowly coming into an understanding of what French classical music sounds like.  At least I’m starting to be able to feel a gavotte.  It’s not as if I have a robust understanding of other categories of musical sound – I have some minuets that follow a similar pattern, but other than that it’s clear that one of Suzuki’s interests was introducing beginners to a wide variety of classical music.

Lully was a baroque composer, so his Gavotte comes from an earlier period than the other two I’m playing – in fact he had a hand in developing the dances that became mainstays in the French aristocratic scene of the mid 17^th century.  He also danced for the court.

I so enjoyed having a lesson yesterday – it was quite satisfying to be able to play through the Gavotte from Mignon and show it to Teacher.  I’ve worked on it for probably six weeks now, and it’s finally starting to come together.  In a few weeks I’ll be able to play that hat trick I wrote about a while back.

Thanks for reading.

Ryan