Bergamask

Bergamask, bergomask, bergamesca,[1] or bergamasca (from the town of Bergamo in Northern Italy), is a dance and associated melody and chord progression.

Bergamesca ('The Buffens'), Straloch MS., c. 1600[1]

Bergamesca variant, MS. Lute Book, c. 1600[1]

Reputation

It was considered a clumsy rustic dance (cf. Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V Scene i Lines 341 and 349) copied from the natives of Bergamo, reputed, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, to be very awkward in their manners.[2]

The dance is associated with clowns or buffoonery, as is the area of Bergamo, it having lent its dialect to the Italian buffoons.[1]

The basic chord progression is I–IV–V–I:[3]

│⎸ I IV V I I IV V I :⎹⎸
I IV V I I IV V I ⎹│

Bergomask is the title of the second of the Two Pieces for Piano (1925) by John Ireland (1879–1972).

(1916). The Musical Times, Volume 57, p.491.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bergamask". Encyclopædia Britannica. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 772.
Apel, Willi (1969). Harvard Dictionary of Music, p.91. ISBN 978-0-674-37501-7.

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