Two galops by Johann Strauss, sr.

It is probably not surprising that music for the galop was prone to the same repetitious figures and "square-cut" designs as the contradance (in its 19th century form of the quadrille), although the reasons were different. The latter needed its repeated units and "quadratic syntax" as aural markers of the changes of figures for group dancing. The galop, on the other hand, was a fast couple dance that often amounted to little more than holding onto your partner and skipping/racing down the floor: here it was the sheer speed that demanded simplicity and clarity in the music.

Galops are the second most numerous compositions in the work lists of both Joseph Lanner and Johann Strauss, sr., a reflection of the dance's popularity in the 1830s and 1840s. An early galop by Strauss (his op. 8) shows the musical priorities plainly. "Sauf aus!" in the introduction, by the way, means "Drink up!" Both strains are periods. In the first, a measure-long motive is heard three times and then the phrase is distinctively rounded off with a higher flourish. The consequent phrase does the same. The pattern is reversed in the second strain: an opening lower-register flourish is followed by three statements of a one-bar motive. Overall, the form is what I call an "AB design": two strains with largely unrelated materials (in contrast to the traditional small binary form of the 18th century, where there was usually a tight relationship between the two sections). For more on this design, see this post and its link: Lanner.

Appropriately, Strauss's Op. 28 is titled Wettrennen-Galopp, or "Racing Galop." Steady progress upward, aided by the transposition of the consequent up one step, is broken only at the last possible moment to finish the line in the lower octave.