Galant

What it means

Galant designates a graceful, pleasing performance of courtly bearing: light, elegant, without heaviness and without pathos.

The term is at the same time a term of period. The galant style designates a direction of the music of the middle of the eighteenth century that turns away from the artful counterpoint of the Baroque and instead prefers a singing upper voice over simple accompaniment. Pleasingness and naturalness count there as values, learned compositional craft recedes. The word comes from French society language and originally designates worldly, polite conduct.

As a performance instruction it accordingly calls for a performance that wants to please: clearly articulated, ornamented, without effort.

In the notation

The word stands above the staff and applies until a new marking. As a term of style, by contrast, it is not notated but shows itself in the picture of the writing: symmetrical phrases, usually of two or four bars, a leading upper voice, plain accompaniment figures, rich ornamentation, and frequent cadences.

Musical use

The galant style shapes the music between the Baroque and the Viennese Classical period and prepares its formal language. As a performance instruction, galant stands over minuets, over variations of a light character, and over movements that link up with the court music of the eighteenth century. In later periods too the word appears where such a tone is deliberately quoted.

The galant style arose around 1720 as a countermovement to the dense polyphony of the late Baroque. It prefers clear melodies with simple accompaniment, short phrases, many ornaments, and a light, pleasing attitude. Important representatives are Pergolesi, Johann Christian Bach, and Telemann in later works. The classical style emerged from it. As a performance marking, galant calls for an elegant, light tone without heaviness.

Performance practice

Play lightly and articulated: show the two-bar groups without emphasizing them, and let the phrases end instead of tying them. Keep the accompaniment slim and clearly softer than the melody. Execute ornaments incidentally, as if they belonged there as a matter of course. And avoid large dynamic arcs — grace arises from measure, not from intensification.