Notes on the Baroque Suite. The principal areas I will cover in this brief discussion of the Baroque Suite are (a) its significance in the history of instrumental music and its origin as stylized dance music, (b) its overall structure and the structure and other characteristics of the individual movements, and (c) some historical and musical facts pertaining to the Suite in C Major for Unaccompanied Violoncello by J. S. Bach. I. Dance Music and the Baroque Suite In the broadest musical sense of the term, a “suite” is a multi-movement group of instrumental pieces, in forms smaller than the movements of a sonata. The possible range of pieces is from dance or dance-like pieces, to excerpts from ballets and operas, excerpts from motion picture scores, incidental music for plays, and freely assembled movements of relatively short, light character. [i] The Baroque suite is one of “the two chief multi-movement forms of the history of instrumental music,” and the major one prior to 1750.
II. A b c d a b III. (IV/V or I?) Baroque music. Baroque music forms a major portion of the "classical music" canon, being widely studied, performed, and listened to. Composers of the Baroque era include Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Alessandro Scarlatti, Domenico Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi, Henry Purcell, Georg Philipp Telemann, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Arcangelo Corelli, Tomaso Albinoni, François Couperin, Denis Gaultier, Claudio Monteverdi, Heinrich Schütz, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Jan Dismas Zelenka, and Johann Pachelbel. The Baroque period saw the creation of tonality. During the period, composers and performers used more elaborate musical ornamentation, made changes in musical notation, and developed new instrumental playing techniques. Baroque music expanded the size, range, and complexity of instrumental performance, and also established opera, cantata, oratorio, concerto, and sonata as musical genres.
Many musical terms and concepts from this era are still in use today. Etymology[edit] History[edit] Thomas Arne. Bach 6 Cello Suites , Rostropovich. Original Baroque Suite for Harpsichord in D Major Gigue R 79. Baroque Suite, Spring Dance Inspiration 2009.