ABSTRACT
During the course of this chapter, I will show that definitions of the suite by modern scholars sit uneasily with seventeenth-century court traditions. We therefore need to discuss these definitions and their origins. In modern times, it is no exaggeration to say that the suite has often been regarded by scholars as something of a poor relation to the sonata. Perhaps as a result, the so-called ‘classical order’ was imposed upon the suite, presumably in an attempt to give it a readily identifiable sonata-like hierarchy and structure. This structure was made up of specific dances placed in a specific order; every example of the suite could then be judged in terms of its relationship to this order. The main dances, labelled by Tobias Norlind as ‘Haupttänze’ were the allemande, courante and sarabande, with the gigue being added for suites written in the later part of the century. 1 Even in the later part of the twentieth century, scholars were still concerned with hierarchy. David J. Buch’s definition of early French suites is as follows:
A flexible hierarchy of types of movements, marked by a sense of proportion (and perhaps decorum) achieved by a somewhat loose ordering of dances of a specific meter, character and tempo. 2
