Gavotte avec les six doubles

Gavotte avec les six doubles by Jean-Philippe Rameau, catalogued as Pièces de clavecin, is a work for solo piano in A minor. Composed during the Baroque era, it forms part of the composer's enduring contribution to the keyboard repertoire and is freely available in the public domain through archives such as IMSLP.

Jean-Philippe Rameau's three published books of harpsichord pieces are the high point of the French Baroque keyboard repertoire alongside Couperin — bolder in harmony, more virtuosic in writing, and studded with character pieces of extraordinary specificity.

The work is suited to intermediate-level pianists. As with all repertoire from this period, study editions vary; the public-domain engravings linked here are based on the most widely-circulated nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century editions and are sufficient for serious study, recital preparation, and recording.

About Jean-Philippe Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau's three published books of harpsichord pieces are the high point of the French Baroque keyboard repertoire alongside Couperin — bolder in harmony, more virtuosic in writing, and studded with character pieces of extraordinary specificity.

Key character — A minor

Ancient and elegiac. The natural minor of the keyboard and a constant home for Baroque dance suites and Romantic character pieces.

The Baroque Era

The Baroque era brought the keyboard from the harpsichord and clavichord to its expressive zenith. Counterpoint, dance suites, fugues, and ornamentation define the music of Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, and Couperin. Pieces from this period reward careful voice-leading and articulate fingerwork.

About the Gavotte form

A French dance in moderate duple time, common in Baroque suites. Always begins on the half-bar — that upbeat is one of the gavotte's defining fingerprints. Often paired with a contrasting musette as a trio. Bach, Handel, Rameau, and Couperin all wrote major gavottes for keyboard, and the form survived as a stylized character piece into the Classical and even Romantic periods, where composers used it for moments of formal, slightly archaic elegance.