Suite in F major

Louis Couperin, uncle of François, was among the founders of the mid-seventeenth-century French harpsichord school. None of his music was published in his lifetime; it survives entirely in manuscript. His suites typically open with an unmeasured prelude, notated as pitches without rhythmic values so that the player decides the pacing — an improvisatory convention peculiar to French keyboard music. The dance movements that follow are short and tightly worked, and the ordering of a Couperin suite was in practice left to the performer.