The passacaglia ( / p æ s ə ˈ k ɑː l i ə / ; Italian: [passaˈkaʎʎa] ) is a type of music that began in Spain in the early 1600s. Composers still use it today. It is usually serious in tone and is based on a repeating bass line. It is written in 3/4 time, which means the music follows a pattern of three beats per measure.

Origin

The word passacaglia comes from Spanish words meaning "to pass" and "street." It began in Spain around the early 1600s as a short, strummed musical section between dances or songs. Although the form has Spanish origins (as shown in Spanish writings from that time), the first written examples of passacaglias were found in an Italian source from 1606. These early pieces, along with others from Italian sources from the same time, were simple and short, using repeated chord patterns that formed a musical resolution.

In the late 1620s, the Italian composer Girolamo Frescobaldi changed the passacaglia into a series of changes based on a repeating bass line (which could itself be altered). Later composers followed this model, and by the 19th century, the term passacaglia came to describe a series of changes over a repeating musical pattern, often serious in tone. A similar form, the chaconne, was also first developed by Frescobaldi. These two styles are closely related, and because "composers often used the terms chaconne and passacaglia without clear rules," modern efforts to define them clearly are not supported by historical evidence.

Early scholars tried to describe differences between the chaconne and passacaglia, but their conclusions often disagreed. For example, one scholar, Percy Goetschius, said the chaconne usually uses a repeating harmonic pattern with a recurring melody in the highest voice, while the passacaglia uses a repeating bass line. Another scholar, Clarence Lucas, described them in the opposite way. More recently, some progress has been made in understanding how these forms were used in the 17th and early 18th centuries, when composers like Frescobaldi and François Couperin intentionally combined the two styles in the same piece.

The melody in a passacaglia—usually four, six, or eight bars long—repeats unchanged throughout the piece, while the upper musical lines are freely changed, with the bass pattern providing a stable foundation.

In the 17th century, the chaconne in Frescobaldi’s music was more often in a major key, while the passacaglia was usually in a minor key. In 18th-century French music, the passacaglia focused more strongly on a repeating melodic bass line, while the chaconne, "in contrast to 17th-century Italian practice, was treated more freely in several ways."

Composers

Some examples include the organ passacaglias by Johann Sebastian Bach, Dieterich Buxtehude, Johann Pachelbel, Sigfrid Karg-Elert, Johann Caspar Kerll, Daniel Gregory Mason, Georg Muffat, Gottlieb Muffat, Johann Kuhnau, Juan Bautista Cabanilles, Bernardo Pasquini, Max Reger, Ralph Vaughan Williams (Passacaglia on B–G–C, 1933), George Frideric Handel, and Leo Sowerby.

Passacaglias for lute were written by composers such as Alessandro Piccinini, Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger, Sylvius Leopold Weiss, Esaias Reusner, Count Logy, Robert de Visée, Jacques Bittner, Philipp Franz Lesage de Richée, François Dufault, Jacques Gallot, Denis Gaultier, Ennemond Gaultier, and Roman Turovsky-Savchuk. A passacaglia for bandura was composed by Julian Kytasty, and for baroque guitar by Paulo Galvão, Santiago de Murcia, Francisco Guerau, Gaspar Sanz, and Marcello Vitale.

One of the most famous examples of the passacaglia in Western classical music is the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582 for organ by Johann Sebastian Bach. French harpsichord composers, especially Louis Couperin and his nephew François Couperin, used a version of the form called the passacaille en rondeau, which included a repeating section between the variations. Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s Passacaglia, the final piece in his Rosary Sonatas, is one of the earliest known compositions for solo violin. The central section of Claudio Monteverdi’s madrigal Lamento della Ninfa is a passacaglia based on a descending tetrachord. The first two movements of the fourth sonata from Johann Heinrich Schmelzer’s Sonatæ unarum fidium are passacaglias on a descending tetrachord, though in an unusual major key. In 1650 or earlier, Andrea Falconieri published a passacalle movement for three instruments with basso continuo in Naples. The fourth movement of Luigi Boccherini’s Quintettino No. 6, Op. 30 (also known as Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid) is titled Passacalle. The final movement of George Frideric Handel’s Harpsichord Suite in G minor (HWV 432) is a passacaglia that became well known as a violin and viola duo, arranged by Norwegian violinist Johan Halvorsen.

Other examples of passacaille include Les plaisirs ont choisi from Jean-Baptiste Lully’s opera Armide (1686) and Dido’s Lament, When I am Laid in Earth from Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, the aria Piango, gemo, sospiro by Antonio Vivaldi, or “Usurpator tiranno” and Stabat Mater by Giovanni Felice Sances and others.

Nineteenth-century examples include the C-minor passacaglia for organ by Felix Mendelssohn and the finale of Josef Rheinberger’s Eighth Organ Sonata. Notable passacaglias by Johannes Brahms appear in the final movement of his Fourth Symphony, which many musicians consider one of his greatest works. Brahms composed this piece to follow the strict rhythm of classical dance. British conductor Constant Lambert described it as “grimly intellectual.” In Brahms’s Variations on a Theme by Haydn, the bass line repeats the same harmonic pattern throughout the piece. The first movement of Hans Huber’s Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 113 (1899) is a passacaglia.

The passacaglia remained a popular form throughout the twentieth century and beyond. In mid-century, one writer noted that “despite delays in performing new music, there are more twentieth-century passacaglias in active use by performers than baroque works in this form.” Composers closely associated with the passacaglia include Benjamin Britten, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Paul Hindemith. Britten often used the passacaglia in his operas to create dramatic climaxes, as seen in Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, Death in Venice, and Albert Herring. He also used the form in smaller vocal works, such as the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (1943) and The Holy Sonnets of John Donne (1945) for voice and piano, as well as in instrumental pieces like the Violin Concerto, the second and third Cello Suites, the second and third String Quartets, the Cello Symphony, and the Nocturnal after John Dowland for guitar. Shostakovich used the passacaglia only in instrumental works, such as the Interlude in Act II of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the Tenth String Quartet, the Second Piano Trio, the Eighth and Fifteenth Symphonies, and the First Violin Concerto. Hindemith used the form to end his 1938 ballet Nobilissima Visione, and it appears in his early Sonata for Viola Solo, Op. 11, No. 5 (1919) and the second movement of the song cycle Das Marienleben (1948), as well as in later works like the Fifth String Quartet and the Octet for Winds and Strings. Igor Stravinsky used the form for the central movement of his Septet (1953), a work between his neoclassical and serial periods. A passacaglia is also found in the finale of Witold Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra and in the final movement of Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices.

Important examples of the form are found in the works of the Second Viennese School. Anton Webern’s *Op