There is no doubt that he was a public favorite and that he published his pieces for the clavecin to satisfy a general demand. Also in a measure to safeguard his music. For at that time instrumental pieces were not often published, but were circulated in manuscript copies in which gross errors grew rapidly as weeds; and which, moreover, were common booty to piratical publishers, especially in the Netherlands. So Couperin took minute care in preparing his music for his public. Each set of pieces was furnished with a long preface, nothing in the engraving was left to chance, the books were beautifully bound so that all might be in keeping with the dainty and exquisite art of the music itself. Since his day his pieces were never published again until Madame Farrenc included the four great sets in her famous _Trésor des Pianistes_ (1861-72). This edition was, according to Chrysander,[16] very carelessly prepared and is full of inaccuracies. Chrysander planned a new, accurate and complete edition, to be edited by Brahms, of which unhappily only one volume, containing Couperin’s first two books, ever came to print. The original editions being now rare and priceless, and hardly serviceable to the average student on account of the confusing obsolete clef signs, it is to be hoped that before long Chrysander’s plan will be carried out and the almost forgotten treasures of Couperin’s clavecin music be revealed in their great beauty to the lover of music. Couperin published in all five books of _pièces de clavecin_. Of these the first appeared early in the century and is not commonly reckoned among his best works. The other four sets appeared respectively in 1713, 1716, 1722, and 1730. Each book contains several sets of pieces grouped together in _ordres_, according to key.[17] The canon of the suite is wholly disregarded and there is very little of the spirit of it. The first _ordre_, it is true, has as the first six pieces an allemande, two courantes, a sarabande, a gavotte, and a gigue; but there are twelve pieces in addition, of which only three are named dances. The second _ordre_, too, has an allemande, two courantes, and a sarabande at the beginning; but there follow eighteen more pieces of which only four are strictly dances. The fourth _ordre_ is without true dance forms; so are the sixth, the seventh, the tenth, and others. Even the orthodox dances are given secondary titles, or the dance name is itself secondary. In fact, not only by including within one _ordre_ many more pieces than ever found place within the suite, but by the very character of the pieces themselves, Couperin is dissociated from the suite writers.