(Fr. gigue, gigle; It. and Sp. giga).
A term widely used in medieval Europe to denote a bowed instrument. It is generally believed to have been the rebec because the name gigue gradually went out of fashion as that of the rebec gained ground in the 14th century and gigue was not normally synonymous with vièle or fidel according to both fictional literature and historical accounts, which often mention these instruments together. Johannes de Garlandia, in his early 13th-century Dictionarius, lists the giga and viella as being played in rich Parisian households. It is also known that three German gigatores performed at the Feast of Westminster in 1306, together with fiddlers, crowders and many other minstrels (Bullock-Davies, 106–8), and in 1375 the ‘violam et gigam’ were played by two German musicians in the presence of the Duke of Savoy (Bachmann, 150). There are many poetic descriptions in different languages of the gigue and vièle being played together in celebrations, particularly to accompany singing and dancing. However, the early 14th-century German poem Der Busant, in its vivid description of a ‘fedele’ having silk strings and decorations of gold, precious stones and ivory, finally declares ‘Thus the gige was made’, showing that, after all, the two words could sometimes mean the same instrument (Page, 241).
W. Bachmann: Die Anfänge des Streichinstrumentenspiels (Leipzig, 1964, Eng. trans., 1969, as The Origins of Bowing and the Development of Bowed Instruments up to the Thirteenth Century)
C. Bullock-Davies: Menestrellorum multitudo: Minstrels at a Royal Feast (Cardiff, 1978)
M.A. Downie: The Rebec: an Orthographic and Iconographic Study (diss., U. of West Virginia, Morgantown, 1981)
C. Page: Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages: Instrumental Practice and Songs in France, 1100–1300 (Berkeley, 1986)
M. Remnant: English Bowed Instruments from Anglo-Saxon to Tudor Times (Oxford, 1986)
P. Bec: Vièles ou violes? Variations philologiques et musicales autour des instruments à archet du Moyen Age: Xie–XVe siècle (Paris, 1992)
MARY REMNANT