Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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738 SUITE SUITE
Padnans and Gaillards by Johann Ghro of Dresden
in 1604. In such a manner originated the
idea of joining different dance-tunes together to
make an artistic balance and contrast, and in this
lies the germ of the Suite ; in which, by selecting
dances of various nationalities, and disposing
them in the order which displayed
their relative bearings on one another to the
best advantage, composers established the fii'st
secular instrumental cyclic art-form.
It is not possible, for want of materials, to
trace fully the process of selection. The Pavans
and Galliards dropped out of fashion very early,
and AUemandes and Oourantes came in, and
soon became 0. sort of established nucleus, to
which was sometimes appended a Sarabande, or
even several other dance movements, and a Prelude.
Indeed, when the principle of grouping
movements together was once accepted, the
speculations of composers in that line seem to
have been only limited by their knowledge of
dance-forms. It was in fact by experimenting
with various methods of grouping that the most
satisfactory succession was arrived at ; and thus
many of the earlier suites contain a greater profusion
and variety than is found in those of the
maturer period. In Purcell's suites, for instance,
which date from the last ten or twenty years of
the 17th century, besides the AUemande and
Courante, which occupy just the very position
in which they are found in the Suites of Bach
and Handel, in one case the group also comprises
a Sarabande, Cebell, Minuet, Biggadoon,
Intrade, and March ; while another contains a
Trumpet tune and a Chacone, and another a
Hornpipe. One of the most curious features in
them is the absence of the Jig, which in the
mature suite-form was the only one admitted
of English origin. The opening with a Prelude
is almost invariable ; and this is not astonishing,
since this kind of movement (which can hardly
be described as a form '
') was as familiar as the
dances, from having been so often attempted
by the early instrumental composers, such as
Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, Bull, and Blow among
Englishmen. The order of four movements
which served as the nucleus in the large proportion
of suites of the mature period is also
occasionally, by accident, found very early ; as
for instance in one of the Suites of Froberger,
which Nottebohm says was written in 1649 ;
and another by LuUy, which was probaWy
written early in the second half of the same
century.
These groups had, however, as yet no uniform
In England, in common with
distinctive title.
other combinations of divisions or movements,
they were generally called Lessons, or Suites of
Lessons, and continued to be so called till after
Handel's time. In Italy similar groups were
called Senate da Camera ; in Germany they were
called Parties or Partitas, as in the Clavieriibung
of Kuhnau published in 1689, and' the
set of six by Johann Krieger' published in 1697
and in France they were as yet commonly known
as Ordres. Thus the fact evidently existed
universally for some time before the name by
which it is now known came into general use.
The composers of different countries illustrated
in different degrees the tendency towards consolidation
which is inevitable in an art-form.
The steps taken by the Italians appear to be
particularly important as illustrating the distinct
tendencies of the Suite and the Sonata. Corelli's
earlier Senate da Camera are scarcely dis- -
tinguishable from the suite type, as they consist
of a string of dance-tunes preceded by a prelude.
The later sonatas or solos of his Opera Quinta,
however, represent different types. Some still
consist of dance-tunes, but many also show a
fair proportion of movements of more abstract
nature ; and in several the dance element is, in
name at least, quite absent. These are indeed
a sort of combination of the church and chamber
sonata into a secular form, adding a canzona or
free fugal movement in the place of the alle-^
mande, and transmuting the other dance types
into movements with general qualities analogous
to the earlier sonatas. Where this abstract
character prevailed, the type approached more
distinctly to that of the modern sonata ; and
where the uniformity of a dance rhythm prevailed
throughout, it approached more nearly
to the suite type. In these oases the arrangement
had already ceased to be a mere crude
experiment in antithesis, such as the early
balance of galliard and pavan, and attained to ,
the dignity of a complefe art-form. With the
Italians the remarkable' distinction of their ^
violin school led to the greater cultivation of the
Violin Sonata, which though retaining a few
dance-forms, differed markedly in their distrihution,
and even in the structure of the movements.
In both France and Germany more attention
seems to have been paid to the clavier, and with
it to the suite form.' The former country very
early showed many proofs of appreciation of its
principles ; as an instance, the suite by LuUy
in E minor, mentioned above, has the complete
series of allemande, sarabande, courante, minuet,
and gigue: But a little later, theatrical influences
seem to have come into play, and Rameau
and Couperin, though in many cases adopting
the same nucleus to start with, added to it a
profusion of rondeaus and other short movements
called by various eccentric names. In
one of Couperin's Ordres the number of little
pieces amounts to no less than twenty-three
and in such a case it is clear that a sense of form
or complete balance in the whole can hardly
have been even aimed at. The movements are
strung together in the same key, according to
the recognised rale, as a series of agreeable ballet
pieces, and the titles point to their belonging to
quite a different order of art from that illustrated
1 See Muftical Times, 1901, p. 163. 2 See Sonata.