A tambourin is a piece of music that imitates a drum, usually as a repetitive not-very-melodic figure in the bass.

A tambourin itself is a small, two-headed drum of Arabic origin, mentioned as early as the 1080s (noted as a "tabor" in Roman de Roland). It was played together with a small flute (galoubet

Galoubet

Galoubet may refer to:* Galoubet A, a show jumping horse* A type of Pipe...

, flaviol).

A tambourin, as a dance, hails from Provence. It was accompanied by a pipe and, curiously enough, a tambourine (modern meaning), which is also called a "tambour de Basque."

A tambourin as a concert piece is lively and in duple meter

Duple meter

Duple meter is a musical metre characterized by a primary division of 2 beats to the bar, usually indicated by 2 and multiples or 6 and multiples in the upper figure of the time signature, with 2/2 , 2/4, and 6/8 being the most common examples...

. Jean-Philippe Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...

 wrote many of them as parts of his operas. The most famous one is his Tambourin in E Minor from his Pièces de Clavecin

Pièces de Clavecin

The French Baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau wrote three books of Pièces de clavecin for the harpsichord. The first, Premier Livre de Pièces de Clavecin, was published in 1706; the second, Pièces de Clavessin, in 1724; and the third, Nouvelles Suites de Pièces de Clavecin, in 1726 or 1727...

, originally from his opera Les fêtes d'Hébé

Les fêtes d'Hébé

Les fêtes d'Hébé, ou Les talents lyriques is an opéra-ballet in a prologue and three entrées by the French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. The libretto was written by Antoine Gautier de Montdorge...

(1739).