Johann Sebastian Bach was possibly the first composer to realize that the scoring, technique, structural typology and even sonority of the orchestral music of his time could he transferred to the keyboard. 

Obviously with full awareness of his own ability in terms of knowledge of composition in assimilating different musical styles into his own language. And so, while putting himself to the test with the classical forms of the German keyboard tradition (organ fugue, variation, chorale, toccata and so on), achieving an unusual breadth and a surprising artistic level, he also showed his ability to use the harpsichord keyboard to imitate a baroque concerto (Italian Concerto), an overture in the style of Lully (French Overture) or a dance suite. He produced three series of these dance suites, using themes that he had composed himself: the French Suites, the English Suites and the Partitas (or German suites). 

The basic structure of Bach's suites was inherited from the instrumental tradition and he himself kept to it essentially in the form of the French Suites. It consists of four dances, usually given their French names: allemande (of German origin), courante (French), sarabande (Spanish) and gigue (English). They are stylized dances, not suitable to he used for dancing. 

In the larger-scale works, such as the English Suites or the Partitas, Bach introduces extensive opening preludes, which in the Partitas have a variety of titles (Preambulum, Sinfonia, Fantasia, etc.), and before the closing gigue he inserts other dances - generally in pairs - known at the time as galanteries, of French derivation: bourrées, gavottes, menuets and Passepieds.

Various hypotheses have been put forward since the time of Bach's first biographers to justify the use of the word "English" in the name by which these suites are now known; the term is stylistically inaccurate, because the style is typically French, and the original title was simply 'Suites with preludes". 

Bachian numerology has also emphasized the fact that these suites are six in number, each having six movements, and that there is a stepwise descent in the sequence of tonalities: A major, A minor, G minor, F major, E minor, D minor.

The most characteristic and novel and certainly most impressive movement in these suites is the opening prelude, almost always in fugue style, with a repetition of the first part; more concise in the first suite and more extensive in the sixth (with two episodes: adagio, allegro). In these preludes Bach foreshadows something that he succeeded in showing with what I would describe as even more "instructive" clarity in the Italian Concerto: the use of the harpsichord with two keyboards (not yet explicitly requested) to recall the first movement of a baroque "concerto grosso", with its alternation of Tutti and Soli. Obviously the performance on the piano makes op for the lack of a second keyboard with the dynamic differences that the modern instrument allows.

The prelude is followed by various dances. The Allemande is generally a flowing andante of a melodic nature, the Courante even more flowing (excessively so with some performers!), a mixture of melodic and joyful with a torrent of ornaments, the Sarabande, by contrast, is the lyrical moment in the suite, somewhat static and often enriched by an ornamented echo of itself (Double), and finally the Gigue provides a rapid, brilliant conclusion, often in fugue style - complex and harmonically bold in the last suite. Deservedly famous among the Galanterien in these suites are the Bourrées in the second and third suites, also because they are the only suites included in our conservatoire programmes.

(Translated by Karel Clapshaw)