Grace Notes

Musical Term: “Suite”

A collection of dances performed by a solo keyboard instrument or orchestra. In the Baroque, the German keyboard suite had four standard movements: 

• Allemande (a German imitative dance in moderate duple meter) 

• Courante (a slow homophonic French dance in triple meter)

• Sarabande (a slow Spanish dance in two)

• Gigue (a lively French/Irish dance in 12/8 meter) 

In the 1700s, the French composer Francois Couperin devised a new type of keyboard suite with many short individualized movements (called “ordre”) that had picturesque programmatic titles.

Source:  Western Michigan University.