Information about the compositional styles

Hey Walter,

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but have tried Wikipedia? For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigue

If that didn’t work, a couple of ways, come to mind:

One is listen to lots of examples of the type of music you’re interested in until you feel you know something about it, just like you probably saw lots of examples of a banana before you knew what one was. You probably identified various characteristics that defined it for you. The same happens with music; you identify types of rhythm, harmony, melody, instrumentation etc., the combination of which is what defines it.
The second is the first suggestion, but you could also read about it somewhere else, like in an encyclopaedia like Grove, or whatever you might have. OK, so now you’ve read all about the type of composition you’re interested in, how can you go about recognising it by hearing it?

I suggest you take, for example, a gigue you know, and try to recognise the characteristics you’ve read about. You could listen for the skipping rhythm. You could listen for the faster tempo. You might hear what form it has, although that isn’t always easy. It could also be good to listen to it in context, together with the score if you like (always helpful for developing reading skills), so if it’s a gigue, you know that it often comes at the end of a suite, so listen to a whole suite (also notice the slow sarabande in the middle) and see what you notice. Expanding the context, you could see what the same composer did in different suites. Expanding further you could see what other of that composer’s contemporaries did with gigue and/or suites. Expanding the context even further, you could look at what composers did in different period of musical history.

That’s probably enough to get you started.

I hope this helps somehow! Good luck!