The Story of Music

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21812, 18 June 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Story of Music

4—ORCHESTRAL MUSIC: THE SUITE

Last week we saw how the complicated singing music of the opera, the part-song and the oratorio developed from the singing of simple folk-songs in ancient days. Just as primitive musicmakers began this remarkable development of vocal or singing

music when they discovered that they could improve the sound of a melody by introducing a low voice as a shadow to a high one, so they began the development of instrumental music when they discovered that they could improve the sound of a melody played on a blowing instrument by accompanying it with a string-scraping one. The illustration shows how early string-and-bow instruments looked. It can well be imagined that the first music made on several instruments —say banging, blowing, plucking and string-scraping instruments together—would be simply a melody played by those instruments in combination. For dancing it would be found that the banging instruments, the drums, were particularly useful for marking the regular time of a dance while the string-scrapers would be useful for showing the gliding movements of the figures. Now, a theory that seems an especially good one is that the forms of such orchestral pieces as sonatas, suites, rondos, fugues and symphonic developed from the earliest of the more elaborate dance music. Imagine it this way: you are living long ago in a dance-loving tribe. You have musicians with several instruments; numbers of your friends begin an exciting and long dance. You begin by lightly hopping in a circle, warming yourselves for the dance; round and round you go skipping and hopping and bending your swaying body backwards and forwards. The music is sprightly, fresh, quick. Soon you have introduced your dance. Now you change your high skipping step to a slow, stately one. Your body moves gracefully, you pause, sweep slowly, gracefully with your arms; everyone is thoughtful, quiet, moving slowly and rhythmically. The music is hushed, the strings are scraped in long, slow sweeps of the bow and the drums are muffled as they are slowly, ponderously beaten. Perhaps you begin to feel mournful and sad. But now the dancers lift up their heads, throw their hands from side to side and begin to caper, to jig a little and to be merry and lively in the dance. The music changes, too. There are small frills, quick string-pluckings, quick

movements of the bow; and the drums are beaten lightly rat-a-tat. Soon your sprightliness turns to greater energy; faster and faster you go; your feet twinkle and scarcely are heard as they fly lightly round the dancing ring. Perhaps you clap your hands, toss your head and twirl round and round as you go. The music races and the feet of the dancers race; and with a huge burst of speed and triumphant sound, music and dancing are at an end. This, of course, is all imagination. But if the music for these parts of the dance were played without any dancing it would make good entertainment. It is possit.e that men and women danced these different speeds and kinds of dances one after another and later used the music for new patterns; it is also possible that they put together the kind of music for a slow dance and the kind for a quick dance and so made something different from the melody of a simple folk song. But somehow it happened. Musical suites began to be played and to be recognised as suites (French suite, following one after another, a succession or series, from the verb suivre, to follow) in the sixteenth century. By this time the suite was written as a musical work not to be accompanied by singing or dancing. At first the suite was given these parts, each with the name of a dance. 1. Allemande (a German dance, quick); 2. Coranto (an Italian dance, also quick); 3. Sarabande (a Spanish dance, slow); 4. a Gigue (a French jig, very quick and sprightly). Sometimes the slow part was No. 2 and sometimes No. 3. But always a fairly quick theme began the suite and a very quick one finished it.

One of the first music-makers to compose suites or music with parts and patterns was Jan Sweelinck, a Dutch musician. His work was improved and perfected by Handel and Bach in the seventeenth century in their suites and partitas (which means the same thing). But it must be remembered that the suites of to-day are very different from the fresh and entertaining suites of the forms Allemande, Courante (or Coran to), Sarabande and Gigue. We shall see later how those sixteentn, seventeenth and eighteenth century suites gave place to the magnificent sonatas and symphonies, the kings among musical forms.

These are some recordings of J, S. Bach’s suites:— ,

Suite in G (arrapged by Eugene Goossens, a British composer of note who conducts for the London Symphony, Covent Garden and New Symphony Orchestras); London Symphony Orchestra, cohducted by Goossens. Suite No. Z in B Minor. Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, conducted by Willem Mengelberg. Suite No. 3 In D Major. Brussels Royal Conservatoire Orchestra, conducted by Desire Defauw. 05075-7.

Descriptions of the suites are issued with some of the records. Another suite of the old style, this is not for orchestra, is one by Henry Purcell (1658-1695).

Suite in 6 Minor. Harpsicord solo by Rudolph Dolmetsch.