When I was at school, as part of my music A-level I was set a challenge to write a piece based on a ground bass, in the style of Henry Purcell (a man who, according to Dave Barber’s estimable book Bach, Beethoven and the Boys could, as a teenager, sing perfectly in octaves). Ground basses are not, as the name implies, a form of culinary concoction derived from an unfortunate accident between Bryn Terfel and a pepper mill, but rather a repeating bass line over the top of which a melodic line is increasingly elaborated. One of the best examples is Purcell’s own “When I am laid”1 from Dido and Aeneas.

I had a reasonably good go at it. My music teacher described it as ‘actually quite good’, although the level of incredulous surprise in his voice somewhat deflated me2. Listening back to it now, it’s OK, but doesn’t sound remotely like Purcell really, and I noticed that I get bored after about 5 repeats of the ground bass line and then cheat by effectively writing an allegro coda which only barely touches on the original ground bass.

Anyway, the point of this is to say that writing pieces mimicking an ancient style is of course a common exercise for composers, and it is not a surprise that Saint-Saens, with his particular classical bent and love of the works of Bach and Rameau, would attempt this. As I’ve commented before though (on his Suite for Orchestra in D, Op. 49) the problem is these pastiches are just not very….. gripping….. as the Gavotte in C minor also demonstrates.

Let’s all dance the Gavotte

Gavottes, which were originally a French folk dance, have been popular sources of pastiche – not least in Prokofiev’s First Symphony (but also, I was surprised to learn, in Bernstein’s Candide, which I suppose makes sense given the setting).

Saint-Saens wrote this short (less than 4 minute) piano piece shortly after he had fled to England, escaping Paris on (almost literally) the last train out, during the bloody fallout from the Paris Stockade and Franco-Prussian war. Arriving in London with little more than his name and some well meaning friends (including Sir George Grove, of the eponymous musical dictionary fame) to support him, he needed to find a way of making money quickly. That meant basically giving lots of piano and organ recitals around London (and he did get to meet Queen Victoria). Composition took a back seat, and without easy access to any large scale forces during these few months in London, his composition efforts were therefore largely focussed on short piano pieces, arrangements and songs (include some of his few English language songs). The Gavotte was among the first of these that began to feature regularly in his London recitals.

Composed in the conventional ABA form, the C minor section is a fairly unremarkable and ploddingly pompous stomp. The middle C major section is more curious, and much less self-consciously a baroque pastiche. It consider of sustained pedal notes over which unison thirds and sixth swirl around, with some slightly funky harmonies and chord changes. The slightly echoey and muddy feels reminding me ever so slightly of the Tortoises section of the Carnival of the Animals, without the can-can quotes.

Gavotte in C minor, Op. 23

Why you might want to listen to it: It’s a fairly stern piece but interrupted by a strangely contrasting and dreamy middle section

Why you might to avoid it: It doesn’t really sound like a gavotte you’d want to dance to. Give me the can-can any day.

1 – It’s about dying, not about losing one’s virginity.

2 – I have got used to this. I once had an Italian housemate who, after I had cooked the house dinner, said to me “Thankyou so much for dinner tonight! When I heard you were going to be cooking I was dreading it and thought ‘this is going to be terrible’ but it was actually really good” – which is like praising but also destroying you at the same time really. She was, though, a bit of cooking nazi, who looking pained every time I did unforgivable things like breaking spaghetti before putting it in the pot. I won’t repeat what she said the one time she caught me mixing bacon with pesto (which, in retrospect, IS pretty disgusting).