Musical Form
Suite
A set of shorter, contrasting pieces grouped into one work.
Orchestral / Chamber
A suite is a collection of shorter pieces, or movements, gathered together and performed as one work, usually linked by a shared idea rather than the tight structural logic of a symphony. The word is French for "a following" - a set of pieces that follow one another.
The Baroque dance suite
In the Baroque era, suites were typically built from a sequence of stylized dances, each with its own tempo and character, and each from a different corner of Europe:
- Allemande ("German") - moderate and flowing.
- Courante ("running") - a lively French or Italian dance.
- Sarabande - slow and stately, originally from Spain.
- Gigue - fast and bouncing, descended from the English and Irish jig.
A typical Baroque dance suite ran in that order - moderate, flowing, slow, then fast - with optional extra dances like a minuet, bourrée, or gavotte often inserted between the sarabande and the closing gigue, and sometimes a prelude or overture at the start. By the time composers wrote them, these were concert pieces rather than music for actual dancing, but each kept its dance's characteristic rhythm.
Bach wrote suites for every medium: the English and French Suites and Partitas for keyboard, the six suites for solo cello, and four Orchestral Suites. Handel's Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks, written for outdoor royal occasions rather than the dance floor, show the suite already stretching beyond its strict dance-form origins even within the Baroque era itself.
Suites from the stage
Later composers loosened the form further, assembling suites from excerpts of larger stage works (Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite draws its movements from the full ballet, and was actually premiered in concert months before the ballet itself) or as freestanding sets of character pieces with no dance connection at all. The practice carried into the 20th century as a practical way to give a work a second life in the concert hall: Prokofiev drew a suite from his film score for Lieutenant Kijé, and Grieg's incidental music for the play Peer Gynt is now far better known through the two orchestral suites drawn from it than through the play itself. Concert suites from film scores are common today.
Suites of character pieces
Some composers wrote suites from scratch, as sets of contrasting portraits: Holst's The Planets, Debussy's Suite bergamasque (home of Clair de Lune), and Grieg's Holberg Suite, a 19th-century homage to Baroque dances. Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin revived the old dance suite as a memorial to friends lost in the First World War.
Famous suites
- Bach - Orchestral Suite No. 3, with the "Air."
- Bach - Cello Suite No. 1.
- Handel - Water Music (1717).
- Grieg - Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 (1888).
- Tchaikovsky - The Nutcracker Suite (1892).
- Holst - The Planets (1916).
Where to start listening: Bach's Orchestral Suites show the Baroque dance-suite format; Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite is a friendly, melody-driven alternative. Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, especially "Morning Mood" and "In the Hall of the Mountain King," is another approachable, tuneful entry point.