Ordre

(Fr.).

A term used by François Couperin (1713–30), François Dagincourt (1733), Philippe Veras (1740) and Coelestin Harst (1745) for a group of pieces in the same key. It is possible that for Couperin ordre meant something larger than a suite. In the preface to Les nations (1726), a collection of ensemble music, he explained that the sonades served as introductions to the suites; the whole complex was called an ordre. Four of the ordres of his first harpsichord book begin with suites of the late 17th-century type and continue with more up-to-date character-pieces. The later ordres, however, do not exhibit this dichotomy, and Couperin's imitators used the term as a synonym for ‘suite’. Brossard's dictionary definition of ordine, or ordre, makes no mention of sets of pieces; however, each suite in G.B. Brevi's Bizzarie armoniche (1693) is called an ordine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Reimann: Untersuchungen zur Formgeschichte der französischen Claviersuite (Regensburg, 1940/R)

O. Baumont: ‘L'ordre chez François Couperin’, François Couperin: Nouveaux regards: Villecroze 1995, 27–41

DAVID FULLER