Suite

A run of dances in one key, the suite arranges characters into a sequence.

Related

BaroqueSuiteCelloHarpsichord

A suite lines up dances or character pieces in one key. It avoids the dramatic push of sonata form; each movement changes step and mood.

Origins

Renaissance dances came in pairs, a slow pavane followed by a quick galliard. Seventeenth-century composers fixed the allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue into a set, sometimes with a prelude. Bach wrote French, English and cello suites, Handel wrote Water Music, and the suite entered court and theatre.

Listening features

Hear the character of each dance: the allemande moves at a moderate speed with a polyphonic opening; the courante is lively, often shifting between triple and duple; the sarabande is slow with a weight on the second beat; the gigue is fast, with triplets and fugal imitation. Movements usually share a key and close clearly. An orchestral suite changes colour through instruments, while a ballet suite extracts numbers from a stage score.

Composers and works

Bach's Cello Suite No. 3 opens with solo arpeggios. Handel's Water Music joins overture, dances and horn calls into an outdoor suite. Grieg's Peer Gynt and Holst's The Planets carry the suite into later concert halls.

Lineage

It grows from paired dances and lute arrangements and leads to the sonata, the divertimento and the ballet suite; film scores often use the suite to reshape stage material.

Misconceptions

A suite is not a random anthology, since its movements share a key and a dance order. It is not only Baroque, as concert suites after 1800 are common. Nor is it a cycle, which need not have dance character.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "Suite" — definitions and dating checked, not quoted
• Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 2 — context checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.