Gavotte in the context of "Gluck"

The six Cello Suites, BWV 1007–1012, are suites for unaccompanied cello by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). They are some of the most frequently performed solo compositions ever written for cello. Bach most likely composed them during the period 1717–1723, when he served as Kapellmeister in Köthen. The title given on the cover of the Anna Magdalena Bach manuscript was Suites à Violoncello Solo senza Basso (Suites for cello solo without bass).

As usual in a Baroque musical suite, after the prelude which begins each suite, all the other movements are based around baroque dance types. The cello suites are structured in six movements each: prelude, allemande, courante, sarabande, two minuets or two bourrées or two gavottes, and a final gigue. Gary S. Dalkin of MusicWeb International called Bach's cello suites "among the most profound of all classical music works" and Wilfrid Mellers described them in 1980 as "Monophonic music wherein a man has created a dance of God".

A suite, in Western classical music, is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral/concert band pieces. It originated in the late 14th century as a pairing of dance tunes; and grew in scope so that by the early 17th century it comprised up to five dances, sometimes with a prelude. The separate movements were often thematically and tonally linked. The term can also be used to refer to similar forms in other musical traditions, such as the Turkish fasıl and the Arab nuubaat.

In the Baroque era, the suite was an important musical form, also known as Suite de danses, Ordre (the term favored by François Couperin), Partita, or Ouverture (after the theatrical "overture" which often included a series of dances) as with the orchestral suites of Christoph Graupner, Telemann and J.S. Bach.

The bourrée (/bʊˈreɪ/; Occitan: borrèia; also in England, borry or bore) is a dance of French origin and the words and music that accompany it. The bourrée resembles the gavotte in that it is in double time and often has a dactylic rhythm. However, it is somewhat quicker, and its phrase starts with a quarter-bar anacrusis or "pick-up", whereas a gavotte has a half-bar anacrusis.

In the Baroque era, after the Academie de Dance was established by Louis XIV in 1661, the French court adapted the bourrée, like many such dances, for the purposes of concert dance. In this way it gave its name to a ballet step characteristic of the dance, a rapid movement of the feet while en pointe or demi-pointe, and so to the sequence of steps called pas de bourrée.