Listening to Baroque Dance Rhythms in Suites

Why the steps matter

A Baroque suite is a gathering of dances, and each one arrived in the composer's study with a set of steps already attached. When you know the step, the rhythm stops being an abstract pattern. You hear a bow arm sweeping, a foot rising, a couple turning. That is the particular pleasure of this repertoire: the music is choreographed, even when nobody is dancing.

The core of the suite runs allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue, with lighter dances often slipped in between. In very broad terms, the shape is moderate, running, slow and weighty, then quick and contrapuntal. Hold that sequence in mind and an unfamiliar suite stops sounding like a random set of movements.

The allemande: a walk with weight

The allemande opens most suites in a steady four, usually with a single short upbeat and continuous flowing quavers or semiquavers. It began as a processional couple dance, and that sense of purposeful walking survives on the page. Listen for a smooth, unbroken line, phrases that overlap rather than stop neatly, and imitative entries passing between the hands.

It is rarely dramatic, and that is the point. The allemande establishes a temperament — serious, thoughtful, unhurried — and the dances that follow will answer it. If you find yourself settling into the pace of a long stride, the performance is working.

The courante: running, and the tilt of the hemiola

A courante moves. The French variety is written in 3/2 or 6/4 with running quavers, its phrases seemingly always mid-step. The Italian corrente is quicker and clearer in 3/4, with even triplets in place of the French swing. The essential listening pleasure lies in the hemiola: accents that shift the music from three to two within the same bar, so that the floor seems to tilt beneath you.

Try beating time, then let the accent land on beat two rather than beat one. That slight disorientation is not a mistake — it is the dance talking.

The sarabande: the accent that falls on the second beat

After the courante comes the sarabande, slow, in triple time, and marked by a weight on the second beat. Often a long note or a chord lands there, and the effect is both dignified and slightly sorrowful. It came to Europe from Spain, and by the Baroque it had become the emotional centre of a suite — the place composers allowed themselves their most expressive harmony.

A useful exercise: ignore the melody for a minute, hum the bass, and tap the second beat. The dance's characteristic heaviness becomes obvious at once. The second half of a sarabande is often more ornamented than the first, and a fine player will let the decoration float above that stubborn pulse.

The gigue: both feet off the ground

The gigue ends the suite, usually in compound time — 6/8, 12/8 or 6/4 — and usually in fugal texture, with each entry chasing the last. Feel it in two large beats rather than six small ones; counting in six tends to make it plod. Listen for the subject appearing in the upper and lower lines in turn, and for the small lift at the end of each phrase.

The English jig is its ancestor, and the liveliness has not been lost. This is where the suite lets its hair down, and where a good ensemble will sound genuinely delighted.

The dances in between, and what a double does

Composers often inserted extra dances between the sarabande and the gigue. Each has an unmistakable opening gesture:

• Minuet — graceful 3/4, often in pairs, the second played by three instruments before the first returns.
• Gavotte — 4/4 beginning halfway through the bar, with a two-crotchet upbeat; the phrase seems to lift off the ground.
• Bourrée — lively 2/4 with a single-crotchet upbeat, frequently in rondeau form.
• Passepied — a brisk, skipping dance in 3/8 or 6/8.
• Polonaise — triple metre with a short-short-long phrase ending that never fails to identify it.
• Double — a variation that decorates the original dance note by note while keeping its bass and metre.

Listening practice for the week ahead

The fastest way to internalise these rhythms is to move, even slightly.

• Mark the step with a hand or foot as you listen: a deliberate walk for the allemande, a run for the courante, a slow weighted step for the sarabande, a skip for the gigue.
• Check the time signature before the music begins. Setting the metre in your head changes what you notice.
• Follow the bass line, because the harmony shifts usually land on the step rather than around it.
• Choose a single suite and listen three times: once for the melody, once for the bass, once purely for the feet.
• Bach's English Suites, French Suites and cello suites, Handel's keyboard suites and Purcell's theatre dances all repay this attention.

None of this requires a dance floor, only the willingness to hear the body in the music. Once you do, the allemande, the courante and the gigue will never sound quite anonymous again.