Bach would not have called this work an "orchestral suite" but rather an ouverture after the type of French suite that he was emulating. (Then again, he rarely applied the term "cantata" to the works for which we now use that term — instead he would have called them Kirchenstücke, or simply Stücke, that is, the "pieces" he wrote for church each Sunday.)

The French ouverture suite descended from the operatic overtures of the court of Louis XIV and the ballet music of the seventeenth century. Such works were especially popular at those European courts that emulated Versailles; the opening overture was often cast in slow-fast-slow form (with a regal introduction surrounding a central fugal section) and followed by a selection of dance movements.

Like his brilliant reimagining of the concerto grosso in the six Brandenburgs, Bach surpassed all of his predecessors in the brilliance and variety he brought to the ouverture form. The first suite is cast in the manner of a concerto grosso (with a concertino of two oboes and bassoon pitted against the larger group of strings), while the second suite is a virtual flute concerto and the third and fourth utilize trumpets and drums. While only four suites survive, Bach may have composed more. It is thought that he wrote most or all of these works while at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen. The earliest surviving copies date from 1729, when Bach performed all four of the suites at his Collegium Musicum concerts in Zimmerman's Coffeehouse at Leipzig.

The first suite is unique in that it includes a forlane among the dance movements, a lilting Italian dance that by Bach's time had become associated with the French depictions of the carnival of Venice; this dance form is rarely found elsewhere in Bach's work. The other dances featured in BWV 1066 include pairs of courantes, gavottes (originally a simple peasant dance, but assuming a great deal more sophistication here due to Bach's imaginative rhythms), menuets, boureés and passespieds.

© 2003 Jeff Eldridge