North Coast Synthesis Ltd.

Gigue

A "gigue" (pronounced zheeg) is basically what you get if 17th-Century French people watch an Irish jig and decide that that's really cool and they want to do it too. It's an energetic dance with a triple rhythm such as 6/8 or 12/8, and it is traditionally the last movement of a Baroque dance suite.

I wrote mine as a slip jig, in 9/8 time: three beats to the bar but each beat subdivided into three. I'm not sure how particularly relevant to vampires this movement is, but it's a fun bit of music, and putting a gigue at the end is part of the suite form. Also, Sheridan Le Fanu, the author of the book, was Irish; and I've made the tempo indication "Alla irlandese": it's meant to be a specifically Irish-style "gigue."

There's a bit of the vampiric Eb/B/G chord cycle (here in the form of Coltrane changes, that is, with a V-I resolution from each one) near the end of each strain, and the movement and thus the entire suite ends on an unresolved Eb augmented chord. Despite beheading, staking, and cremation, the traces of Carmilla never quite vanish.