How the French Suites came by their name is hard to say. More French than the English suites they are certainly not, for they are quite as Bach-like as the latter. Without Preludes and without too many Intermezzi or “Doubles” (repetitions with variations), they are of astonishing variety. The Allemandes especially, as first movements in every suite, display such a manifoldness of form, that in fact nothing is left in common to them but the four-time beat. The song in the Saraband and the dance in the Intermezzi appear to the same effect as in the English suites, and a light tone runs through the whole. But the tone is lightest of all in the E major suite, which with its rolling allemande and courante, its singing saraband, its stiff and formal gavotte, its characteristic polonaise, its tricksy bourrée, and its cheerful gigue, is a perfect paradise of dainty devices. The flowing courante in it strikes our fancy; for it is precisely in the courantes of these suites with their heavy old-fashioned movements that we shall most often hit on the rare occasions on which we must regard Bach as already obsolete. The ornamentations tend to appear less befitting to us, scattered so profusely as they are in these movements. But to Bach, little as he could as yet succeed in emancipating himself from ornamentations, they were no longer such a matter of course as with the old French clavecinists. If we compare the different manuscripts of his works, we see the uncertainties and alterations. Bischoff, in his excellent critical edition of Bach’s clavier-music (Steingräber) has therefore only engraved large those ornamentations which were without doubt always played by Bach. Taste will fill them in in certain places on grounds of symmetry and “thematic”; but they are no longer bewildering in their profusion.