A suite is a musical portfolio in which each movement is a separate dance or mood. The Baroque suite typically consisted of four principal dances: allemande (moderate, German), courante (lively, French), sarabande (slow, Spanish), gigue (fast, English).
Bach brought the Baroque suite to perfection in his English and French Suites. In the 19th–20th centuries a concert suite appeared: orchestral numbers from incidental music to plays (Grieg's Peer Gynt) or operas (the Carmen Suites compiled by Ernest Guiraud from Bizet's opera) reworked as standalone works. Skoryk's Ukrainian suite Hutsul Triptych (1965) is a brilliant 20th-century example.
