Passepied

The passepied (French for "passing feet"; IPA2|pasˈpje) is a 17th- and 18th-century dance that originated in Brittany.Fact|date=September 2008 The term can also used to describe the music to which a passepied is set. The music is an example of a dance movement in Baroque music and is almost always a movement in binary form with a fast tempo and a time signature of three quavers (or eighth notes) per bar, each section beginning with an upbeat of a single quaver. Passepieds occasionally appear in suites such as Handel's "Water Music" (Suite No. 1 in F) or J.S. Bach's "Overture in the French Style" for harpsichord where there are two Passepieds in minor and major keys respectively, to be played "alternativement" in the order I, II, I.

Leo Delibes also wrote a passepied as part of his incidental music for the play "Le roi s'amuse" by Victor Hugo. A more modern example is the fourth and final movement of Claude Debussy's Suite bergamasque for piano, entitled "Passepied".

In English, passepied has also been referred to as "paspy" (a phonetic approximation of the French pronunciation). However, this spelling is rarely used in modern times.