Suite (music) These optional movements were known as "galanteries": common examples are the minuet, gavotte, passepied, and bourrée. Often there would be two contrasting "galanteries" with the same name, e.g. Minuet I and II, to be played "alternativement", meaning that the first dance is played again after the second, thus I, II, I. The later addition of an overture to make up an "overture-suite" was extremely popular with German composers; Telemann claimed to have written over 200 overture-suites, J. S. Bach had his four orchestral suites along with other suites, and Handel put his "Water Music" and "Music for the Royal Fireworks"
Early music of the British Isles laid some of the foundations of later national and international classical music. Musicians from the British Isles also developed some distinctive forms of music, including Celtic chant, the Contenance Angloise, the rota, polyphonic votive antiphons and the carol in the medieval era and English madrigals, lute ayres and masques in the Renaissance era, which would lead to the development of English language opera at the height of the Baroque in the 18th century. Surviving sources indicate that there was a rich and varied musical soundscape in medieval Britain. Historians usually distinguish between ecclesiastical music, designed for use in church, or