86: Loures

Today’s form the loure, is quite rare—I only know of one, so I apologize in advance for the lack of variety in the sample recordings—but is deeply connected to yesterday’s gigue. In fact, it’s a subtype of gigue: every loure is a gigue, but not every gigue is a loure. (For this reason, you might also hear people refer to the “gigue lent”—the “slow gigue”. These forms are equivalent.) 


The main difference between the gigue and the loure is the tempo of the loure, which is much slower than its parent form is by default. As a consequence of this, while most gigues are written in 6/8 felt in 2, most loures are written in 6/4 and can be slow enough to be felt in 6. (At a certain point, something in 6 gets so slow that you can’t feel it in 2 anymore, and you have to go through the individual sub-beats.)


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