Bourrées

The most well-known bourrée is the one in E minor from the so-called "Lute Suite No. 1." I say so-called because despite a few recordings, the suite is nearly unplayable on the lute (or the guitar, for that matter) though this movement works very well. I say this because there are some passages in the gigue that no-one even attempts. Nearly every classical guitar student takes on the bourrée at some point, though. It is a charming dance with good examples of counterpoint in contrary motion. It is in two sections, a binary dance form, and the first section is pretty easy. In the second half the student will run into a nasty sequence near the end that will be hard to master.

Here is a perfectly decent performance on guitar:

The piece, with its simple, but distinctive character, has been surprisingly popular among non-classical musicians ranging from Paul McCartney to Jethro Tull.

But the dance was used by many Baroque composers. It is one of a group of dances called "galanterie" that were optional members of the suite and often came in pairs. Here are the pair of bourrées from the Cello Suite No. 3 by Bach:

As you can hear the first bourrée is repeated after the second, giving a ternary form. Here is a bourrée by François Couperin. It is followed by its double or variation.

And here is another bourrée by Bach, this time from an orchestral suite:

Bourrées are also dance steps in ballet, those tiny steps en pointe that seem to glide across the stage. There are examples here at 0:56 and 1:35:

So there you go! Now you know a bit more about the bourrée than you did before. Possibly!