All music grows out of an “argument” between two contrasting principles: repetition and change. Repetition provides coherence, a hook for the memory in our understanding of the shape of a piece, but risks boredom. Change, or variety, provides novelty and interest, but risks incoherence. Over the centuries, composers have blended these two principles in varying degrees and different ways. The two genres that form the basis of this program, passacaglia and chaconne, seem to have had different origins, though they grew so much alike eventually that the terms were interchangeable. Perhaps this was only natural, because they made similar use of the principles of repetition and change.

Both Passacaglia and Chaconne seem to have originated in techniques of improvisation in the music of Hispanic culture, whether in the Old World or the New. In each case, a short repeated pattern forms the basis of the music. The pasacalle (as it first seems to have been called in 17^th-century Spain) apparently grew out of a few strummed chords improvised between the verses of a song, often with a simple harmonic pattern that suggested closure. It could be played over and over, if necessary, as a vamp, until the singer was ready for the next stanza. The first written examples are in Italian guitar tablatures of the period, where they can be in either duple or triple meter and usually provide a sequence of four chords that form a solid cadence.

The chacona is first mentioned in Spanish literary sources of the late 16^th century. No actual music survives from this period, but Cervantes, Lope da Vega, and others indicate that it is a dance song connected with servants, slaves and Amerindians—suggesting that it originated in the New World. In 1599 we read about “an invitation to go to Tampico in Mexico and there dance the chacona”. Queveda calls it the “Chacona mulata” and Cervantes the “Indiana amulatada.” When it arrived in Spain, the chaconne quickly became a popular dance which, when it started being included in popular commedia dell’arte routines, was promptly banned. But already the improvisatory quality settled into a pattern of short harmonic phrases that repeated over and over again.

In the case of both the chaconne and the passacaglia (known collectively as “ground bass” forms), the harmonic pattern (played by the basso continuo in an ensemble piece or the left hand of the solo keyboardist) would repeat, while an improviser (or later, a composer) would invent contrasting melodic material, often overlapping the cadences to mitigate the feeling of the form’s inexorable regularity. The haunting and melancholy “My Lady Carey’s Dompe” (anonymous, ca.1425), regarded by some musicologists as an example of chaconne, is one of the earliest and musically most interesting ground bass, solo keyboard pieces. Hugh Aston, in his lively and robust“ Hornepype”, from the period of Henry VIII, reveals a seemingly inexhaustible musical imagination as he spins rhythmically complex and syncopated melody over the chords of C Major and F Major.  Other composers reveled in the challenge of finding a way to overcome the inherent monotony of a regularly repeated harmonic pattern with evermore imaginative melodic overlay. Henry Purcell was one of the greatest masters of the genre in both songs and instrumental works. Time and again he returned to this challenging layout and produced some of his most famous, free-flowing melodies (such as Dido’s “When I am laid in earth”) over what might have seemed a restrictively mechanical bass line and repetitious harmonic plan. The G minor Chaconne played this evening is another memorable example of his prowess with this form.

The first composer who seems to have linked the ideas of the chaconne and the passacaglia—as they were eventually to become almost indistinguishable—was the greatest Italian keyboard master of the early 17^th century, Girolamo Frescobaldi.   In 1637 he published his monumental Cento Partite sopra Passacagli (100 Variations on the Passacaglia). Frescobaldi numbers each two-measure long variation through the eleventh, leaving keyboardist and listeners on their own after that.  This densely contrapuntal work, displaying the musical and intellectual genius that J.S. Bach among others admired and emulated, gives the performer many opportunities to shape its length by virtue of its clear sections and the composer’s permission. One may finish the piece at a cadence well before the end or merely skip some parts ad libitum. In addition to the Passacaglia variations, Frescobaldi offers a corrente and three different ciaccone, each in a different key.

The dance character of the chaconne survived for some time, while the passacaglia became increasingly serious. Or perhaps that is simply the result of our hearing such captivating examples of the ciaccona (the composer’s term) as Monteverdi’s Zefiro torna, in which two singers (or, as in our version, singer and oboist) recount with brilliant virtuosity and elegant word-painting the delights and freshness of spring. A dancing bass line outlines the chaconne pattern in a way that suggests a rhythmic play between 3/ 4 time and 3/2. The syncopated lilt of the dance never stops until—near the end of the poem—the poet reveals that, although all earth is responding to the glories of spring, he alone is suffering amorous torment. And even then, before the end, the dance triumphs!

German composers took up the forms that had developed in southern Europe, employing both Ciaccona(Buxtehude) and Passacaglia (Bach’s great C-minor organ work—here transcribed for ensemble). Both composers elaborate the melodic changes to a degree that somewhat obscures the essential dance character of the early works, replacing it with a fecundity of melodic imagination that amazes and moves the susceptible listener.

The genres of chaconne and passacaille lasted longer in the living music—and dance—of France than elsewhere in Europe. The theatrical tradition of the French court virtually demanded that dance hold a leading place. The two great masters for the harpsichord—Louis Couperin and his nephew, François “le Grand”—both composed  substantial works in the form of chaconnes or passacailles for the harpsichord and, in François’s case, chamber ensemble.

But the great examples of the genre in France came from the theater. The lively volatility of the Spanish and Italian forms changed, in the context of a royal court, to a music-and-dance form of great stateliness, as befitted the glories of the royal household and regal taste. In the operas of  Jean-Philippe Rameau, the greatest French composer of the 18^th century, an elaborate chaconne served as a superb means to end an opera—whether Les Indes galantes (“The Gallant Indies,” or—less literally but more clearly— “Love in Exotic Climes”) of 1735 or the mythological opera Castor et Pollux (1739). In both cases, the chaconne encapsulates more than 250 years of history. The risqué street song of the New World has become so thoroughly domesticated that it becomes the very symbol of elegant civilization.