musical definition of pasacaglia?

Question

does anyone have the GROUTE music history book??...I need a definition for passacaglia

Answer 1

Here's what Wikipedia says:

Originally a slow Spanish and later Italian dance in 3/4 time, the passacaglia denotes a musical work in 3/4 based on a ground bass pattern (that is, a melodic fragment (usually 4, 6 or 8 bars long, rarely an odd number such as 3, 5 or 7) which repeats unchangingly throughout the duration of the piece, while the upper lines get varied freely, over this bass pattern that serves as a harmonic anchor). The passacaglia is very closely related to the chaconne, except that the chaconne more often than not is in a major key, while the passacaglias are usually in a minor key (there are numerous exceptions). The chaconne is usually based on a harmonic sequence rather than a ground bass pattern. But there are passacaglias titled as chaconnes and vice versa in many original baroque sources, leading to some confusion.

In modern music, the term passacaglia is often used to denote a piece that doesn't necessarily conform to the baroque ideal of the form (and not even necessarily in 3/4 time), but which has a more or less fixed bass pattern (ground bass) or chord progression, sometimes both, that is repeated consecutively throughout most or all of the piece. Sometimes it departs entirely from the form, but retains its essentially grave character (cf. passacaglias by Shostakovich)

One of the best known examples of a passacaglia in western classical music is the one in C minor for organ by Johann Sebastian Bach, BWV 582. Other examples are the organ passacaglias by Dieterich Buxtehude, Johann Pachelbel, Johann Kaspar Kerll, Georg Muffat, Gottlieb Muffat, Johann Kuhnau, Max Reger.

Answer 2

Passacaglia is a musical form of the 17th and 18th centuries consisting of continuous variations on a ground bass and similar to the chaconne