suite (swēt), in music, instrumental form derived from dance and consisting of a series of movements usually in the same key but contrasting in rhythm and mood. The principle of the suite can be seen in the playing together of two dances in contrasting meters, e.g., pavan and galliard or passamezzo-saltarello in the 16th cent. The early 17th-century English composers William Byrd, John Bull, and Orlando Gibbons published small groups of dances, with several movements written for the virginals. In France and Italy there developed sophisticated techniques for linking dances together, which were adopted by German musicians in the early 17th cent. As the connection with actual dancing disappeared, the baroque suite evolved. In France stylized dances were collected into ordres such as those of François Couperin, while in Italy nondance movements were introduced into the developing sonata da camera (see sonata). In Germany the suites of Johann Jakob Froberger established the basic group of movements as allemande, courante, and sarabande, with a gigue often played between the last two. The gigue was later the final movement of four. The late baroque suite, e.g., the partitas of J. S. Bach, frequently has an introductory movement and one or more of several simpler dances—minuet, bourrée, gavotte, passepied, and others—added to the basic group. Suites for orchestra, including Bach's, were sometimes called ouvertures. In the classical period the serenade was a kind of suite. Mozart wrote several of this sort for orchestra. The 19th-century suite became a collection of pieces drawn from incidental music for plays or from the score of a ballet, e.g., Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite and Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite.

suite (Fr., Eng.; Old Fr. ordre; Old Eng. lesson; Old Ger. Partita or Partia; Old It. sonata da camera). A following. Orig. a piece of instr. mus. in several movts., usually in dance-style. During 17th and 18th cents. was one of most important forms of instr. mus. During Baroque period, typical suite would have framework of allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue, with frequent interpolations of minuet, gavotte, passepied, bourrée, musette, and rigaudon. The various movts. were usually based on one key, though modulations occurred within individual movts. Nearly all movts. were in simple binary form. Fr. kbd. suites sometimes contained up to 18 movts., but these were not necessarily all intended to be perf. at once: the composer left it to the player to make a selection. In importance the suite was superseded by the sonata and the sym., and the title was given to works of a lighter type, e.g. Grieg's Holberg and Elgar's Wand of Youth Suites, and assemblages of movts. from opera or ballet scores, e.g. Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé suites. 20th-cent. neo-classic composers revived the term (Stravinsky for example).

suite / swēt/ • n. 1. a set of things belonging together, in particular: ∎  a set of rooms designated for one person's or family's use or for a particular purpose. ∎  a set of furniture of the same design. ∎  Mus. a set of instrumental compositions, originally in dance style, to be played in succession. ∎  Mus. a set of selected pieces from an opera or musical, arranged to be played as one instrumental work. ∎  Comput. a set of programs with a uniform design and the ability to share data. ∎  Geol. a group of minerals, rocks, or fossils occurring together and characteristic of a location or period. 2. a group of people in attendance on a monarch or other person of high rank.

suite Musical form, popular in the Baroque period, comprising a number of instrumental dances, which differ in metre, tempo and rhythm but are generally all in the same key. The earliest suites date from the 16th century, and usually involved only two dances, the pavane and galliard. By the 18th century, the dances had become standardized: a prelude, allemande, courante, saraband, and gigue. There was some flexibility, and the minuet, gavotte, bourrée, and rondeau were often added.

Suite

a connected series of items; a retinue of attendants. See also set, staff.

Examples : suite of childish amusements, 1770; of apartments, 1858; English authors, 1824; of crystals, 1805; of tree sparrow’s eggs, 1864; of letters, 1761; of minerals; of musical pieces; of computer programmes—Ponton, 1984; of rooms, 1716; of shells, 1833; of fair white teeth, 1845; of trumps, 1850; of woe, 1602.

suite
1. A set of programs or modules that is designed as a whole to meet some specified overall requirement, each program or module meeting some part of that requirement.

2. A collection of PC applications (spreadsheet, word processor, database, etc.) that are designed to work together.

suite
A. train of attendants XVII;

B. succession, series XVIII;

C. set of rooms XVIII, of furniture XIX. — F. suite; see SUIT. Sense C is of English development.

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