Gallant Style

(Fr. style galant; Ger. Galanter Stil). This term was used by mid-18th-century composers to describe the more "elegant" style of composition that gradually replaced the strict and purely musical BAROQUE idiom of JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH and GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL.

There is, of course, no particular gallantry in this style. The term denotes music in the salon manner, HOMOPHONIC (single-voiced) rather than POLYPHONIC (multivoiced), serving to entertain rather than to enlighten, evoking sentiment rather than thought. In this sense it is synonymous with ROCOCO.

Ironically, it was the sons of J.S. Bach, WILHELM FRIEDEMANN and CARL PHILIPP EMANUEL, who were leaders in overturning their father's more formal music. They advocated a pre-ROMANTIC style of musical affects designed to drive music toward expressing natural human emotions.

Instrumental pieces composed in the gallant style were sometimes called Galanterien. In this lighter mode, dance movements are the favored forms, shortness the most striking feature. Also favored are a symmetry of phrasing, pretty melodies, and pleasing, humorous, and playful qualities.

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