Modern Orchestral Suites

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Suites, as a genre, seemed to have emerged in the late Renaissance and the early Baroque. I'm just guessing here, but I can imagine some feudal lord listening with satisfaction to a bunch of dances performed by a roving band of musicians, and calling one of them over. "So what was that you fellows were playing?" The leader, half in fear of being decapitated, would have looked over to the drummer, who was a little braver than the others, and the drummer strolls over. "Hi, Lord! Hi, Toots; what's up?" You can imagine Toots glaring at the impertinent young drummer, shooting an embarrassed smile at the nobleman, and mumbling to his colleague that they were being asked what the music was called.

The dances were probably called things like Kick the widow while she's down, and Jumping on the chickens, and so on, so of course the last thing Toots wants is to disclose the names of the dances. Upon reflection, it was a bad idea to get the drummer over.
"They're just some dances we play, you know, when folks want to dance, you know, like ..."
"Yeah, like on May Day, and stuff," adds the drummer.
"Yeah, that's it, your lordship," adds Toots.
"But it's got to have a name," insists the lord, or maybe the laird, and so they decide to call it The Mudheap Dances, since it was the Lord of Mudheap that was insisting on a name for the dances. He insists that the next time they come through, he wants to hear the same set of dances, and they had better remember the name of the set.

A suite is basically just a collection, such as a suite of furniture, or a suite of rooms, but most definitely a musical suite is a collection of movements that are intended to be performed together, and, moreover, performed in a designated order.

By the end of the Baroque, when Telemann, Handel and Bach were doing their stuff, they took as their models the suites being performed at Versailles, with Lully and other court composers playing grand-sounding music for the entrance of the King (the Overture), followed by a set of about five dances in contrasting meters, for actual dancing, or for eating to the sound of.

In the time of Mozart, of course, there were the Divertimentos (more properly divertimenti) and Serenades that he wrote for the amusement of the aristocracy of Vienna, and all of Europe, really, since he was invited to Czechoslovakia and France, being a celebrity in a small way. Nobody really wanted to hear his symphonies and concertos; they preferred the Serenades by far. These were lighthearted pieces, intended to be enjoyed with half an ear (in contrast to symphonies and concertos, to which the audience was expected to give their undivided attention).

By the time Beethoven came along, the Suite made a comeback.  Composers were writing Operas like fury, since they were all the rage. (Just as musical theater is more popular than classical music today, so it was then.) Once the opera had finished its run, composers discovered that they could write several movements from the music of the opera, and call it a suite. Hence the Egmont suite by Beethoven. [I have just learned that the Egmont suite is not an instrumental work, so it perhaps does not quite belong in this discussion.] I'm not certain that Mozart did not do something of the same sort, but some of the most popular of suites written in the 19th century have been derived from operas and ballets.  (I must mention here that Purcell, in 17th century England did the same; his suites written for various plays of his time are still frequently performed today, and are among the most accessible music Purcell ever wrote.)

Let me place here a reference to Suites that I found on the Web, the only really useful one: Suites, on Wikipedia. The need to be precise, and the requirement of satisfying Wikipedia's self-imposed, and rather defensive, standards of documentation make filling out a Wikipedia article an exercise in frustration, I imagine, and so all we can find is this compendium of links to existing articles in Wikipedia.

Mendelssohn wrote at least one orchestral suite that I am aware of, namely one inspired by A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare.  Schubert also wrote at least one suite, whose name eludes me. Schumann wrote collections of pieces, not intended to be performed all together, and so do not really qualify for the name of "suite", e.g. Kinderscenen.  Weber wrote the Oberon overture, but possibly not a suite to go with it.

Before I forget, let me mention the major suites that inspired this entire post:
The Mother Goose Suite, by Modest Mussorgsky, originally for piano, but subsequently orchestrated both by the composer, and by Maurice Ravel;
I could not get a decent clip of this one; sorry! I'll keep trying...

Pictures at an Exhibition, also by Mussorgsky (also orchestrated by Ravel, among others);
This is a grand and brilliant work that is very accessible and entertaining.

Le Tombeau de Couperin, by Ravel;

A favorite work of mine!

Pines of Rome, Ancient Airs and Dances, Roman Festivals, and a few other suites by Ottorino Respighi;
Ancient airs is lovely. Festivals is noisy and brassy, evidently very influential; you can hear echoes of this style in film scores.

The Enigma Suite of Variations, by Edward Elgar;
Nimrod is by far the most popular variation.

The Wise Virgins ballet suite by William Walton, based on chorales by J. S. Bach;
The clip contains movements 1-4; the first is from Bach's harmonization of "What God hath done is rightly done."

Numerous ballet suites by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, including Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, as well as a Serenade for strings, which is a suite pure and simple;
The clip is of the second movement of the Serenade: a waltz.

The Rite of Spring, and Firebird, both ballet suites by Igor Stravinsky;

Porgy and Bess, by George Gershwin;

Karelia, by Jean Sibelius;

Smetana's The Bartered Bride, and Ma Vlast;
The clip is the dance of the clowns.--Pardon me: the Dance of the Comedians. I realize that the two categories are not the same, and not knowing Czech I cannot tell which word is appropriate, and must defer to the documentation on the clip.

Peer Gynt, by Edvard Grieg.
The clip is of the movement Morning, also known as Morning Mood.

To be accurate, suites of variations are a slightly different animal from orchestral suites generally. The fact that the variations are linked by being variations of a common theme is an additional structure that is absent in a typical suite.  Because suites are such loosely-linked collections of movements, there is usually --but this is by no means a rule-- a non-musical, or more correctly, an extra-musical idea that holds the movements of a suite together. In Bach's time, for instance, the movements of an orchestral suite needed have nothing in common except key. (The only reason the tune of movement 4 pops into my head at the end of movement 3 is because I have heard the entire suite so many, many times before.)

OK, girls and boys, I'm getting a little hungry, and I'm going to postpone adding some YouTube links for a later date. I can't think of pictures that go along with this post, so if I do add images later, they will be completely gratuitous.

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