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The Dance Suite along with the Fugue and the
variation form, were the most important forms of instrumental
composition in use during the baroque period. The Dance Suite
may be defined as a cycle of dance pieces in various meter
and tempo, written in binary form, all sharing a common key
throughout.
ORIGINS
The gradual emergence of instrumental music
from the dominance of vocal music during the sixteenth century
saw a need for suitable forms to accommodate the new instrumental
style. Composers looked in two directions, firstly they experimented
with the adaption of existing vocal music, secondly, they
looked to the popular ce forms in use at the time. The origin
of the baroque dance suite is to be found in this second direction.
The popular dances of the period, the Pavane and the Galliard
shared a common key but were in contrasting tempo. The Pavane
was performed in slow duple meter whilst the Galliard was
in a faster triple meter.
Many examples of paired dances for the Lute
and the Keyboard exists, for example the English composers
William Byrd (1543 1623), John Bull ('1562 1628) and Orlando
Gibbons (1583 1625) have left us examples of pairs of Galliards
and Pavanes for the Virginal published in 1611 in the Parthernia.
Some of these pairings commenced with a prelude, which was
later to be incorporated into the Classical Dance Suite of
the eighteenth Century.
TERMINOLOGY
The development of the dance suite was shared
by all the countries of Europe, in fact it could be described
as a 'fruit salad' creation, therefore it existed under the
guise of numerous titles depending on the country of origin.
For example, the German title was usually the Overture or
Partita, whereas in England the term most frequently used
was Lessons, the French used the title Ordre, and in Italy
it was generally known as Sonata de Camera (Gillespie 1965,p.39).
Because the form was a truly international one, these terms
were quite often interchangeable.
DEVELOPMENT DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
The early part of the seventeenth century
saw "a great deal of mobility and interchange among musicians
of all nationalities"(Stolba 1990,p.348). This resulted in
the grouping of dances from all parts of Europe to form the
nucleus of the Classical Dance Suite. During this century
the Pavane was eventually superseded as a fashionable dance
by the German Allemande, likewise the Galliard was replaced
in favour of the Italian Courante. These new dance steps were
quickly stylised and incorporated into the dance suite (New
Oxford Companion to Music, p. 1770).
The colonisation of the new world was beginning
to have an influence on European culture. The Sarabande and
the Chaconne, two exotic dances originating in Latin America
and introduced to Spain by the colonists bought a new vitality
to the courts of Europe in the 1580's, Curt Sachs comments
on the need for regeneration in the dance by cultural cross
fertilisation.
'when the dance in a too highly refined
society becomes anaemic fresh blood must be taken from the
dance of foreign peoples, who are more primitive in their
way of life and superior in physical mobility and expressiveness'
(Sachs 1963, p.350).
Both the Sarabande and the Chaconne were considered
much to crude and suggestive in their original form for European
society, so they were stripped of their cruder suggestions
on Spanish soil, polished, painfully adapted to European non
imitativeness and close movement, and in this transformation
introduced into the courtly dance North of the Pyrenees' (Sachs
1963, p.350). In this censored form they soon spread throughout
Europe, and like the Allemande and the Courante were quickly
incorporated into the stylised instrumental dance suite.
The typical Dance Suite from around 1620 30
consisted of the following combination (Grove 1980, p.339).
- Allemande A piece of moderate tempo, serious
in character in duple metre.
- Courante In triple metre at moderate tempo
- Sarabande Slow stately dance in triple
meter.
Numerous examples of the suite in this form
can be found in the music of the French Lute composers such
as Dennis Gaultier (1603 72) and Ennemond Gaultier (1575 1651),
who in turn influenced musicians from other countries including
the German composer Froberger (1616 1667). As the seventeenth
century progressed the number of movements and the order of
placement varied greatly, especially among the French composers.
Dances such as the Gavotte, the Bourree and the Minuet,
featured in the popular French Opera and Ballets
by composers such as Lully (1632 1687) were added to the traditional
dance forms. The Gigue, a fast dance in compound duple meter
originating in England, was also added to form the basis of
the Classical Dance Suite. According to Grove (1980 p.341)
this change happened simultaneously throughout Europe. He
quotes examples by Gaultier (1650) in France, Froberger (1649)
in Vienna, Playford (1655) in England, all of which include
the Gigue. Therefore, the typical dance suite around the year
1650 generally consisted of two pairs of slow and fast dances
as follows.
- Allemande
- Courante
- Sarabande
- Gigue
It should be noted however that the above
order was not fixed, for it is not unusual to find the position
of the Gigue and the Sarabande reversed. Optional dances such
as the Bourree, the Gavotte, and the Minuet were also included
in many dance suites, particularly those of the French composers.
The French contribution to the development
of the Dance Suite during the seventeenth century was a major
one and was twofold, firstly they transformed the dance movements
'from their 16th. century plainness to Baroque refinement'
(Harvard Dictionary of Music, p.717), secondly, they added
various optional dance movements and introduced the overture,
thereby bringing variety and contrast to the suite. Even so,
the French composers 'failed to grasp the idea of the suite
as a musical form' (Harvard Dictionary of Music, p.717), and
seemed to view the suite as method of conveniently grouping
together a collection of dances. On the other hand, German
composer J.J.Froberger (1616 1667) was interested in the suite
as a musical form. He was fully aware of, and was subsequently
influenced by, the French composers such as Chambonnieres
(1602 72) and Gaultier (Sharp 1972 p. 1178), but, his music
'of a complexity and expressive intensity quite beyond anything
French that he could have known, and his cultivation of the
suite as a compact, closed unit, often knit more tightly by
thematic links among the pieces, was characteristically German'
(Grove 1980 p.341).
DEVELOPMENT DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
During the first half of the eighteenth Century
the Suite was the favourite instrumental form throughout Europe.
The French, led by the harpsichord composers
Couperin (1668 1733) and Rameau (1683 1764), were "addicted
to long. suites and fancy titles for the many movements" (Scholes
1972, p993). This French influence can be seen in the works
of German composer Georg Philip Telemann (1681 1767), his
suites are typified by the large number of varied movements
often titled in French. All kinds of dances are represented
as well as a number of movements bearing programme titles.
Telemannís suite for orchestra Musique de Table written
for entertaining at banquets is a fine example of his work.
This practice of providing music for the table was quite common
during the late baroque period especially in Germany (Grove
1980, V 18,p.345).
The two other great Germans composers of the
late Baroque, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 1750), and George
Frideric Handel (1685 1759) absorbed the French developments
and continued to refined the suite to provide, in the suites
of J.S.Bach, 'a brilliant and masterly synthesis of the entire
history and development of the baroque suite' (New Oxford
Companion to Music, p. 1771).
The suite, once the domain of the Lute and
the Keyboard, was now written for orchestra, the Orchestral
Suite No.3 by J.S.Bach is one of the best known, and finest
example of this period. The first of the five movements is
written in the French Overture style, the second movement
departs from the traditional suite grouping by replacing the
traditional Allemande with a simple Air in binary form. Bach
then returns to the use of traditional dance forms by including
a pair of Gavottes in ternary form, a Bourree, and then finally
a Gigue both in binary form.
As well as his four Orchestral suites, Bach
wrote around suites for various instruments including:
- Six suites for solo Cello which feature
the traditional suite grouping of Prelude, Allemande, Courante,
Sarabande, a pair of optional dances followed by a Gigue
- Six English Suites
- Six French Suites
- Six harpsichord partitas.
The suite, after reaching such heights with
Bach and Handel during the first half of the eighteenth century,
ceased to be an important compositional form by the year 1750
its place was eventually taken by the Symphony and the Concerto
of the Classical period.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bach,J.S., Suite No. 3 in 0 Major, Kalmus,
New York.
Edwards,O., Baroque Instrumental Music, 1974,
Open University, Milton Keynes.
Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1963, Ed. Fuller
Maitland, J.A. Barclay Squire, W., Dover Publications, New
York.
Gillespie, J., 1965, Five Centuries of Keyboard
Music, Dover Publications, New York.
Harvard Dictionary Of Music, 1960, Apel, W,
Heinemann, Toronto.
Mellers, W., 1980, Bach and the Dance of God
Faber and Faber Limited, London.
New Grove Dictionary Of Music and Musicians
, Ed. Sadle, S., V18 McMillan, England.
New Oxford Companion to Music, 1983, Arnold,
l) Ed., Oxford' University Press, New York.
Parthernia, 1961, Ed. Dart, T., Stainer &
Bell, London.
Petzoldt, R., 1974, Georg Philip Telemann,
Ernest Benn Limited, London.
Sachs, C., 1963 World History Of The Dance
Norton & Co., New York.
Scholes,P.,1972, Oxford Companion to Music,
Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Sharp, G.B., 1972, 'Gaultier and Chambonniers',
The Musical Times, No. 1588, Vol.1 13.
Spitta, Philip, Johann Sebastian Bach, 1952,
V2, Translated by Bull, C. and Fuller Maitland, J., Novello
& Co., Ltd. London.
Stolba, K.M.,1990, The Development of Western
Music, Wm, C. Brown Publishers, Dubuque, IA.
Telemann, G., Musique de Table, 1733, Ed.
1927, Seiffert, M. DDT, Beihefte.
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