CHAPTER V.
THE SUITE.
I. DERIVATION OF THE SUITE.
Once musicians had begun to realize how dances could be developed into finished pieces, like the gavotte of Bach, which we discussed in the last chapter, they were quick to avail themselves of this advantage by combining several such dances into a group, thus making a composition of some length and dignity and yet of popular, easily comprehensible style. Such compositions, known in England as "Lessons," in France as "Ordres," and in Germany as "Suites" and "Partitas," became numerous in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The first historical step in the development of the suite was taken when the great violin-makers of Cremona and Brescia, in Italy, brought the violin to a wonderful mechanical perfection early in the seventeenth century. Virtuosos on this brilliant instrument were not slow to appear, and they dazzled their audiences with pieces known as sonatas, though having little in common with what we nowadays call a sonata. Their sonata da chiesa, or church sonata, was a group of pieces, all polyphonic in character and derived from the old choral madrigals and canzonas; the sonata da ballo, or dance sonata, was a group of dance tunes; the sonata da camera, or chamber sonata, combined both types. Gradually the first become obsolete, and the second and third took respectively the names suite and partita, although the nomenclature was inexact, as suites often contained movements of strict and severe polyphonic style as well as dances. The greatest of the violin virtuosos was Arcangelo Corelli, whose "sonatas" retain their charm even for our modern ears, as may be seen from the sample of his work studied in the last chapter.
About the end of the seventeenth century the keyed instruments, such as the harpsichord, the clavichord, the spinet, and other precursors of our modern pianoforte, first reached the degree of mechanical perfection which enabled them to rival the violin; and it was accordingly not until then that important pieces for such keyed instruments began to be written. At the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, however, we find interesting music for these instruments by composers of several nations. In France Couperin (1668-1733) wrote what he called "Ordres," short series of pieces "in dance style, piquant in rhythm, melodiously graceful, profusely embroidered with embellishment;"[12] and he was followed by Rameau (1683-1764) with similar works. A curious whim of these French masters was the appending of picturesque titles to their pieces, such as "The Tambourine," "The Hen," "The Return of the Birds," etc.—a practice which anticipates the program music of to-day.
Italy had one extraordinary genius in this department of music, Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757). He was a most brilliant performer on the harpsichord, delighted in all feats of agility, and loved to surprise and astonish his audience. In short he was a virtuoso, and his performances must have created the kind of sensation in the seventeenth century that Liszt's did in the nineteenth. "For vivacity, wit, irony, mischief, mockery, and all the category of human traits which Beethoven's scherzo served so brilliantly to express," says Parry, "the world had to wait for a full century to see Scarlatti's equal again." Some of the preludes, sarabandes, minuets, courantes, etc., composed by him, still retain their interest. His beautiful Pastorale in E-minor, and his "Cat fugue," written on a theme played by a pet cat running across the keyboard, are sometimes heard in recitals.
It was in the hands of the German masters, Bach and Handel,[13] however, that the suite reached its highest state. These two great composers, born in the same year, 1685, possessed not only the sense of technical effect which made Scarlatti great, and the high spirits, enthusiasm, and sense of proportion which are needed for the production of idealized dance movements such as Couperin and Rameau have given us, but they had great musical learning, and much experience in the use of the strict choral style of polyphonic writing, which they showed by introducing into their suites certain movements much more serious in style and exalted in sentiment than dances. The English and French Suites, so called, of Bach, and the Twelve Harpsichord Suites, or "Lessons," as they were called in England, of Handel, deserve to rank among the great masterpieces of musical art.