Piva

The tradition & historical record

Piva is an Italian Renaissance dance that may have originated from a peasant dance to the accompaniment of bagpipes. In 15th-century sources it is described as the fastest version of the basse danse. Antonio Cornazzano, for example, in his Libro del'arte del danzare (ca. 1455), explains that the music for the piva was also called cacciata, was in quadruple time beginning on the downbeat and was twice as fast as music for the basse danse. ¹

The term appeared also in the 16th century, applied to compositions for lute. The pivas in Joan Ambrosio Dalza's 1508 lute collection are very repetitive pieces in quick triple time, with no clearly defined structure. However, it may not be accurate to describe them as being in triple time, since the fast triple rhythmic groupings do not represent one bar each, but rather single beats divided into triplets, just like Thoinot Arbeau's mesure ternaire for the basse danse. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Piva (dance)”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Piva is Italian dance of the Renaissance, performed in the 15th-16th centuries both during folk festivals and at the courts of nobles, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation. ²