Passacaglia

[4] The two genres are closely related, and since "composers often used the terms chaconne and passacaglia indiscriminately ... modern attempts to arrive at a clear distinction are arbitrary and historically unfounded".

[7] More recently, however, some progress has been made toward making a useful distinction for the usage of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when some composers (notably Frescobaldi and François Couperin) deliberately mixed the two genres in the same composition.

[8] The melodic pattern—usually four, six or eight (rarely seven) bars long—repeats without change through the duration of the piece, while the upper lines are varied freely, over the bass pattern serving as a harmonic anchor.

The first two movements of the fourth sonata from Johann Heinrich Schmelzer's Sonatæ unarum fidium are passacaglias on a descending tetrachord, but in uncharacteristic major.

The last movement of George Frideric Handel's Harpsichord Suite in G minor (HWV 432) is a passacaglia which has become well known as a duo for violin and viola, arranged by the Norwegian violinist Johan Halvorsen.

Other examples of passacaille include Les plaisirs ont choisi from Jean-Baptiste Lully's opera Armide (1686) and Dido's Lament, When I am Laid in Earth from Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, the aria Piango, gemo, sospiro by Antonio Vivaldi,[citation needed] or "Usurpator tiranno" and Stabat Mater by Giovanni Felice Sances, et al. Nineteenth-century examples include the C-minor passacaglia for organ by Felix Mendelssohn, and the finale of Josef Rheinberger's Eighth Organ Sonata.

Composed by Brahms to conform to the strict metrics of classical dance, British conductor Constant Lambert called the piece "grimly intellectual".

Examples are found in Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, Death in Venice, and even in the comic opera Albert Herring.

Shostakovich restricted his use of the passacaglia to instrumental forms, the most notable examples being found in his Interlude in Act II of the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Tenth String Quartet, Second Piano Trio, Eighth and Fifteenth Symphonies, and First Violin Concerto.