The Partiten outgrew the ordinary scheme of the suites (allemande, corrente, saraband, gigue) as Beethoven’s sonatas outgrew the old scheme of sonatas. They have given a new life and a new spirit to a traditional form. The suite, which at the end of the seventeenth century has become merely conventional, is so elevated by the spirit of Bach that it thenceforward stands in the world of actuality. Even Schumann selects a similar form for the expression of modern emotions. The suite having been thus despatched, the sonata is in similar fashion put into precise and regular form, to be transfigured later by Beethoven with the same modern spirit. Bach had the fortune and the genius to relegate the traditional suite into the past, and to see the conventional sonata dawning in the future. Thus with him the dance-piece and the free piece remained fresh and lively. Suite and sonata were only different external ways for reducing several pieces to unity. There, men took their stand on the old familiar series of dance-tunes, without ever thinking of the dances themselves; here, they found for the first movement a practical form, and, in the event, ranged the adagio, scherzo, and rondo together, just as their predecessors had used the saraband, minuet, and gigue. On this tendency to unity on the part of the clavier-pieces, from the first English variations, through Couperin’s Ordres, to Bach’s suites, Italian sonatas and German sonatas, Chopin’s Albums, Schumann’s Scenes, Liszt’s Epics, too much stress need not be laid. Even more than the orchestra, the clavier leans to short pieces, but the intellect demands some excuse for binding them together. If we take a striking liveliness as the characteristic of the Partiten, we indeed find a feature in which they are distinguished from the French Suites, but which is far from exhausting their qualities. Solid melodies, humorous capriccios, enchanting dances, tuneful airs, everything is included in these works. In their pages we realise how the spirit of Bach strives to utter the very utmost of which it feels itself capable. And in these introductory preludes, toccatas, or symphonies, in these flowing allemandes, gliding correntes, heavy sarabands, filigree-worked gigues, in those numerous intermezzo movements, such as burlesques, rondos, airs, minuets, and passepieds, there are turns of genius, the form of which is impressed for ever on the mind. I think of the sweet running movements of the astonishing B flat major Gigue; of the brilliant structure of the C minor Capriccio, which concludes the Partita in place of a Gigue; of the D major aria, in which breathes the whole grace of the eighteenth century; of the bold and rhapsodical Saraband in D major; of the rich colouring of the introductory E minor Toccata; the rocking melody of the allemande, the sombre glow of the saraband, the wayward syncopations of the gigue.