Classical Music | Ensemble Music

Jean-Baptiste Lully

Suite from Bourgeois gentillomme Play Play

Ensemble

Recorded on 03/13/2009, uploaded on 09/17/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

From PERIOD PONDERINGS: The Viol by David Schrader

Many years ago, I was much amused to see an advertisement on television that had to do with sets of furniture called "Suits." In a loud voice, reminiscent of an old-time sideshow barker, a gentleman named "Texas T. Buff announced attractively low prices for living room and bedroom "suits." My first thought was, of course, of garments- then I reflected on the origin of the word and realized that it meant anything that was considered as a related group. When one wants a group of things included under one aegis in France, for example, one asks for them "en suite."

This brings us to the substance of this evening's program: suites. Recognizing the pun made from the English word, "sweet," to which it has no relation, a suite is a group of pieces, usually dances, that begins frequently with a larger piece of music that is not dance-related, often an overture.

The overture originated with the music of Jean Baptiste Lully, the founding father (pere fondateur) of the esthetic style that we know as the French "Classique." It consists of a rather stately opening section which is followed by a lively allegro. The stately material may or may not return at the end of the allegro, depending upon the whim of the composer. It is ironic that the only suite heard this evening without an overture (a word meaning "opening") is that of Lully!

The concept of the instrumental suite has its beginnings in more intimate circumstances. Lutenists and harpsichordists would play a prelude (often a piece in very free rhythm that enabled a player to check tuning and to try the physical feel of his/her instrument before commiting to a more defined pulse) before playing a series of courtly dances, the most common of which were the allemande, the courante, the sarabande and the gigue. The allemande alone among these dances no longer had a choreography - it had become a remembrance of a dance form that had slowed into a musical one. The allemande is stately and dignified in the typical suite and is set in common time. The courante was often composed in a time signature that allowed the music to sound in two or three beats to the bar (imagine counting ONE and TWO and THREE and, or ONE and and TWO and and). This was reflected in the steps that the dancers used (a great deal is known of French dancing during the baroque era, principally from a treatise by a gentleman named Feuillet). The sarabande is the slowest of our dances - it challenged the dancers' resistance to the laws of gravity in a highly graceful way. The gigue (or jig in English, giga in Italian) was among the fastest dances, incorporating a fast triple time in two units per bar (ONE two three FOUR five six)...

Jean Baptiste Lully was an Italian (a Genovese born with the name, Giovanni Battista Lulli) who became archly French (one also thinks of the Cardinal, Mazarin, nee Mazzarini, who ruled France during Louis XIV's minority). Lully was a dancer and musician who was also politically adept and very ambitious. During his lifetime, he managed to secure a monopoly on the production of opera - no other composer could produce an opera at the court during Lully's lifetime! Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme was composed as incidental music to the play by Moliere, with whom Lully collaborated before turning to Quinault, with whom he composed his most famous "Tragedies Lyriques." Worth notice is the dance called the "Canarie." This was a dance that referred to the Canary Islands, which in turn signified something rather savage in nature.