(from It. gagliardo: ‘vigorous’, ‘robust’; It. gagliarda, gagiarda, gaiarda; Fr. gaillarde; Sp. gallarda).
A lively, triple-metre court dance of the 16th and early 17th centuries, often associated with the Pavan.
Choreographically the galliard was a variety of the cinque pas, a step-pattern of five movements taken to six minims. Arbeau (Orchésographie, 1588) explained at some length the many possible variations of the galliard; the basic pattern consisted of four grues (the dancer hops on to the ball of one foot while moving the other forward in the air ‘as if to kick someone’), a saut majeur (‘big jump’, often ornamented with beats in mid-air), and a posture (the dancer rests with one foot in front of the other). Ex.1 shows Arbeau’s intabulation of the cinque pas pattern to a galliard tune called Antoinette. Slightly different combinations of kicking and small, jumping steps were required for galliards with longer phrases, but each pattern always ended with the saut majeur, which according to Arbeau often coincided with a rest in the music, and a posture. The steps for the galliard were essentially similar to those of the saltarello and tourdion, except, as Arbeau said, ‘that in the execution of them they are done higher and more vigorously’; the extra height of hops and leaps in the galliard implies that the music cannot be played at all fast.
Like the pavan, the galliard probably originated in northern Italy. D'Accone (1997, pp.652–4, 662) reports references to the gagliarda being taught in a dancing school in Siena about 1493–1503, and to a dancing-master who was engaged in 1505 to teach ‘calatas and gagliardas as well as morescas'. (Sach's claim that Boiardo mentioned the galliard in his epic orlando innamorato is incorrect). The earliest surviving examples of music for the dance are to be found in publications issued by the Parisian printer Attaingnant: Dixhuit basses dances for lute (1529/30), Six gaillardes et six pavanes … a quatre parties (1529/30), and Quatorze gaillardes neuf pavennes for keyboard (1531), the last including a few thematically related pavan–galliard pairs (one in ex.2). Thus the galliard as a musical form first appeared as one of the possible after-dances of the pavan (others were the saltarello, tourdion, Hupfauff and Proportz; see Nachtanz). Morley, in A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597), described in some detail the method of deriving a galliard from its pavan:
After every pavan we usually set a galliard (that is, a kind of music made out of the other), causing it go by a measure which the learned call ‘trochaicam rationem’, consisting of a long and short stroke successively … the first being in time of a semibreve and the latter of a minim. This is a lighter and more stirring kind of dancing than the pavan, consisting of the same number of strains; and look how many fours of semibreves you put in the strain of your pavan, so many times six minims must you put in the strain of your galliard.
16th-century galliards are almost invariably in triple metre, usually in three strains of regular phrase structure (8, 12 or 16 bars), and, like contemporary pavans, in a simple, homophonic style with the tune in the upper part.
Among the earliest Italian printed collections to include galliards are Antonio Rotta’s Intabolatura de lauto (1546), Giulio Abondante’s Intabolatura … sopra el lauto (1546) and Gardano’s Intabolatura nova di varie sorte de balli for keyboard (1551). Rotta’s collection contains groups of dances in the order passamezzo–galliard–padovana, while the other two anthologies consist mainly of isolated galliards, some based on contemporary tunes (for example, Abondante’s Zorzi gagliarda is based on Azzaiolo’s Occhio non fu) and others bearing descriptive titles like El poverin, La comadrina and La fornerina. The pairing of passamezzo and galliard, less common than that of pavan and galliard, continued to appear intermittently during the 16th century, as, for example, in the lutebooks of G.A. Terzi (1593) and Simone Molinaro (1599). These collections probably represent arrangements of popular dance-tunes, rather than music for actual dance accompaniment, which required a larger ensemble. Up to about 1570 most of the surviving ensemble galliards come from France and the Low Countries, in printed collections issued by Attaingnant, Susato and Phalèse. They were often closely modelled on the pavans that preceded them (e.g. HAM, no.137b). Manuscripts of Italian ensemble dances from before 1560 (D-Mbs Mus.ms.1503h; GB-Lbl Roy.App.59–62) contain about 30 pieces in the style of galliards, but none of them is so called (the titles are descriptive or dedicatory), and they are seldom associated with any other dance.
Among the earliest surviving English galliards are two in GB-Lbl Roy.App.58 (c1540) and a ‘Galyard’, together with half a dozen untitled pieces of similar character, in GB-Lbl Add.60577 (ed. in MB, lxvi, 1995, nos.40, 44, 47, 49–53, 55). Most of these appear to be keyboard reductions of consort pieces. Some consort galliards from the early Elizabethan period are in GB-Lbl Roy.App.74–6 (ed. in MB, xliv, 1979, nos.96, 98, 99, 102, [104, 105], 110, [111]). It is not until the period from about 1590 to 1625 that sources become plentiful in England. Galliards from this period, like the pavans, have a musical substance and interest far beyond the needs of functional dance music. Those for keyboard and lute are often of considerable brilliance; each strain is ordinarily followed by a variation enlivened by scales, runs and other kinds of idiomatic figuration, in lieu of the customary repetition of the strain. Those for consort, such as the six-part galliards of Byrd and Gibbons, often have a dense and elaborate polyphonic texture.
Despite Morley’s contemporary prescription about the derivation of a galliard from its pavan, it was comparatively rare for an early 17th-century English galliard to be a close transformation of its pavan (although often there is a similarity of mood between the two pieces). Furthermore, many galliards from the period have survived unattached as independent pieces. The keyboard publication Parthenia (161314), for example, includes no fewer than ten galliards among its 21 pieces, and four of those are independent. Byrd’s famous Pavan: The Earl of Salisbury, most unusually, is followed by two galliards.
A feature of the galliard almost throughout its history was the use of hemiola (the usual division of the six minims into 3 + 3 being varied, especially just before the cadence, by a division into 2 + 2 + 2). Ex.3 shows something of this rhythmic complexity in the first strain of Dowland’s song Can she excuse, which is cast in the form and style of a galliard; the barring in 6/2 is the one that might have been used in a contemporary keyboard version, while the time signatures above the staff represent cross-rhythms suggested by the stresses of the words and the harmonic movement. If such a tune were to be danced to, it would be necessary to decide where to begin the cinque pas pattern. In all Arbeau’s examples, the steps begin with the first notes of a tune. Heartz (1964) has argued, however, that the suspension preceding the cadence (occurring, in this case, on the second beat of the fourth bar) is the logical place for the saut majeur, ‘the equivalent strong accent in terms of the dance’; hence the sequence of steps should begin on the fourth note of the tune. Alternatively, it might be argued that an interesting tension between physical and musical rhythms would result from the juxtaposition of accents if the pattern began on the first beat of the tune. Whichever interpretation of the dance is adopted, there remains a pleasing rhythmic ambiguity in the music of this and many other examples of the galliard.
Like the pavan, the galliard survived as a musical form well into the 17th century. Examples appear in consort suites by several German composers of the early part of the century; contemporary with these are a number of German polyphonic songs having the rhythmic character of the galliard (and sometimes also the title). Galliards feature in Frescobaldi’s Il secondo libro di toccate, canzone (1627) and Johann Vierdanck’s Erster Theil newer Pavanen, Gagliarden, Balletten und Correnten (1637), and later in the suites of Locke’s second Broken Consort (composed c1661–5) and G.B. Vitali’s Balletti, correnti alla francese, gagliarde … a 4 stromenti (1679). A few galliards appear in the work of the harpsichordists Louis Couperin, Chambonnières and D'Anglebert. By this late stage the galliard had become a quite slow piece; Thomas Mace (Musick’s Monument, 1676) said that galliards ‘are perform’d in a Slow, and Large Triple-Time; and (commonly) Grave, and Sober’.
A few 20th-century composers have re-created the galliard, either as a companion to a pavan (e.g. Howells, Vaughan Williams and Britten: see Pavan) or as an independent piece (the ‘Gailliarde’ for two female dancers in Stravinsky's Agon, 1957).
BrownI
T. Arbeau: Orchésographie (Langres, 1588/R, 2/1589/R; Eng. trans., 1948, 2/1967)
C. Sachs: Eine Weltgeschichte des Tanzes (Berlin, 1933; Eng. trans., 1937/R)
L.H. Moe: Dance Music in Printed Italian Lute Tablatures from 1507 to 1611 (diss., Harvard U., 1956)
B. Delli: Pavane und Galliarde: zur Geschichte der Instrumentalmusik im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (diss., Free U. of Berlin, 1957)
D. Heartz, ed.: Preludes, Chansons and Dances for Lute Published by Pierre Attaingnant, Paris (1529–1530) (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1964)
D. Heartz, ed.: Keyboard Dances from the Earlier Sixteenth Century, CEKM, viii (1965)
W.A. Edwards: The Sources of Elizabethan Consort Music (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1974)
C.M. Cunningham: ‘Ensemble Dances in Early Sixteenth-Century Italy: Relationships with villotte and Franco-Flemish danceries’, MD, xxxiv (1980), 159–203
D. Ledbetter: Harpsichord and Lute Music in 17th-Century France (London, 1987)
D.M. McMullen: ‘German Tanzlieder at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century: the Texted Galliard’, Music and German Literature: their Relationship since the Middle Ages, ed. J.M. McGlathery (Columbia, SC, 1992), 34–50
A. Silbiger, ed.: Keyboard Music Before 1700 (New York, 1995)
B. Sparti: ‘Introduction’, in L. Compasso: Ballo della gagliarda [Florence, 1560] (Freiburg, 1995) [facs.]
F.A. D'Accone: The Civic Muse: Music and Musicians in Siena during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Chicago, 1997)
ALAN BROWN