| LC control no. | sh 85129761 |
|---|---|
| Topical heading | Suites |
| Variant(s) | Cassations Divertimenti Divertimentos Nachtmusik Notturni Notturnos Partitas Serenades (Instrumental music) |
| Scope note | Here are entered collections of suites for various mediums of performance. Individual suites and collections of suites for a specific medium of performance are entered under the heading followed by the medium. Works about the suite are entered under the heading Suite (Music). |
| Subject example tracing | Note under Suite (Music) |
| Found in | New Grove, 2nd ed. WWW site, July 18, 2001 (Suite: in a general sense, any ordered set of instrumental pieces meant to be performed at a single sitting; during the Baroque period, an instrumental genre consisting of several movements in the same key, some or all of which were based on the forms and styles of dance music; then and later, a group of pieces extracted from a larger work, especially an opera or ballet; the term did not come into common use until the last quarter of the 17th century, but the kinds of set to which it was eventually applied had a long history, and pairing of dances may be found as early as the 14th century; in Vienna the transition from suite to sonata took place behind the screen of the various terms for entertainment music: divertimento, serenade, cassation, partita, and notturno; the term divertimento, which was the preferred one for any non-orchestral ensemble piece, light or serious, between 1750 and 1780, overlapped with partita, which was a similarly general designation up to about 1760; both could be used for keyboard music as well; "divertimento" carried no implication regarding the number or order of movements or the key-scheme. Divertimento: musical genre, prominent in the Classical period; its structure is normally cyclic; may comprise 1-9 movements, and occasionally as many as 13; its larger manifestations are thus suite-like in movement structure. Cassation: term used 1750-1775 in southern Germany, Austria, and Bohemia as a title of a composition or of a single movement; the soloistic cassation is stylistically related to the divertimento, the orchestral cassation to the serenade. Serenade: musical form, contemporary with and related to other mid-18th-century orchestral genres including the symphony and the orchestral partita; used in its Italian form, serenata, in the late 16th century as a title for vocal works, and in the 17th it was used for celebratory works for voices and instruments; by the end of the century it was applied to purely instrumental pieces, a usage accepted in the 18th century; it then came to stand, if loosely, for a work of a particular character, formal structure and instrumentation, of which Mozart's serenades are the chief examples; such works were composed mainly in Italy, Austria, Germany, and Bohemia; it was the practice to perform them at about 9 p.m.; the orchestral serenade of the 19th century resembles the symphony or suite in construction. Notturno: term used in the 18th century mainly for works performed outdoors, not in the evening but at night (generally around 11 p.m.); the form is related to the serenade; the later nocturne for solo piano had no direct connection with the notturno. Nachtmusik: German form of notturno; Mozart often preferred this term to the Italian one, particularly for works of relatively simple scoring.) |
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