# The purpose of suites



## Savageee (Jun 6, 2020)

Hello.

Again and again I read that many film composers write a suite before the film was even shot.

To the basics: What exactly is a suite? Does it have a structure that reflects the drama of the film?
Or is it about tonality and "story world"?

It seems to make sense to have a structure that the individual themes are oriented towards.
For example the sonata form would work perfectly, because it is built like a 3 act story. Thesis - Antithesis - and Synthesis is exactly what makes a story, respectively Exposition - Development - Reprise.

Looking at the suites of Inception and Interstellar, this structure is less obvious to me. Interstellar - Day One, for example, is getting louder and louder and "bigger" but has no direct connection to the story of the film. If you listen to this suite without knowing the movie you would say it gets more and more epic and bigger, although the movie actually wants to tell an "intimate" father-daughter story.

The themes have to have a recognizable arc through the movie and develop along the film, otherwise you would have a random selection of sequences without any deeper meaning.

How is this arc implemented musically?

Greeting

Savageee


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

In Bach's time a suite, similar to the orchestral suites, was a musical collection of French dances. This is even true in the English suites with dances labeled courante, allemande, bouree, etc.

In modern times a suite has come to mean a collection of similar music usually meant to depict or accompany something -- action in a film or in classical music the activities of a scene in a play. Anyone's incidental music to anything falls into this category.

Filmmakers used to write the suite to a film while it was being made. Today they are more likely to compose while watching daily outtakes to make the music fit the action. The idea of an arc is from the postromantic period; music accompanying film today is far more eclectic.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Sometimes composers and arrangers use the term "suite" because they don't know what else to call it. Just a collection of separate movements, with or without any dramatic order or connection. Not as formal or deep as a symphony. Suites don't have to be put together from soundtracks, ballets, operas or anything else: Grand Canyon Suite for example. Or Dvorak's Czech and American suites. Stokowski put together a suite from Boris Godinov, but called it a "Symphonic Synthesis".


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Just as there are concert overtures that were never really an overture to a fuller stage work. It becomes its own form for the sake of performance.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Sometimes also a suite is extracted from a bigger work to give it a concert presence -- especially excerpts from ballets (i.e. "Nutcracker" suite for instance). Prokofiev actually arranged three suites from "Romeo and Juliet" to get the music out there and establish a demand for a production. A suite from a movie score divorces the themes from slavishly having to follow the scenes (which often leads to disjoint beginnings and endings) and provides a more coherent listening experience.


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