Once musicians had begun to realize how dances could be developed into finished pieces, like the gavotte of Bach, which we discussed in the last chapter, they were quick to avail themselves of this advantage by combining several such dances into a group, thus making a composition of some length and dignity and yet of popular, easily comprehensible style. Such compositions, known in England as "Lessons," in France as "Ordres," and in Germany as "Suites" and "Partitas," became numerous in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The first historical step in the development of the suite was taken when the great violin-makers of Cremona and Brescia, in Italy, brought the violin to a wonderful mechanical perfection early in the seventeenth century. Virtuosos on this brilliant instrument were not slow to appear, and they dazzled their audiences with pieces known as sonatas, though having little in common with what we nowadays call a sonata. Their _sonata da chiesa_, or church sonata, was a group of pieces, all polyphonic in character and derived from the old choral madrigals and canzonas; the _sonata da ballo_, or dance sonata, was a group of dance tunes; the _sonata da camera_, or chamber sonata, combined both types. Gradually the first become obsolete, and the second and third took respectively the names _suite_ and _partita_, although the nomenclature was inexact, as suites often contained movements of strict and severe polyphonic style as well as dances. The greatest of the violin virtuosos was Arcangelo Corelli, whose "sonatas" retain their charm even for our modern ears, as may be seen from the sample of his work studied in the last chapter.
About the end of the seventeenth century the keyed instruments, such as the harpsichord, the clavichord, the spinet, and other precursors of our modern pianoforte, first reached the degree of mechanical perfection which enabled them to rival the violin; and it was accordingly not until then that important pieces for such keyed instruments began to be written. At the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, however, we find interesting music for these instruments by composers of several nations. In France Couperin (1668-1733) wrote what he called "Ordres," short series of pieces "in dance style, piquant in rhythm, melodiously graceful, profusely embroidered with embellishment;"[12] and he was followed by Rameau (1683-1764) with similar works. A curious whim of these French masters was the appending of picturesque titles to their pieces, such as "The Tambourine," "The Hen," "The Return of the Birds," etc.--a practice which anticipates the program music of to-day.