Petite Suite de Concert, Op. 77

Composer: COLERIDGE-TAYLOR, Samuel
  • Coleridge-Taylor wrote his orchestral work, Petite Suite de Concert, around 1911. The “small concert suite” consists of four movements with descriptive titles:
    1. Le caprice de Nannette
    2. Demande et réponse (Question and Answer)
    3. Un sonnet d’amour (A Love Sonnet)
    4. La tarantelle frétillante (The Wriggling Tarantella)1
      • Rabbit hole – the origins of the tarantella (a disease from the 15th century that allegedly caused hysteria and is associated with the bite of a tarantula).
  • The circumstances leading to the creation of Petite Suite de Concert are unknown. We do know that Coleridge-Taylor recycled some musical material from a score he wrote while a student at the Royal Conservatory of Music called The Clown and Columbine, based on a short story by Hans Christian Andersen.2

Sources

  1. “Petite Suite de Concert, Op.77 (Coleridge-Taylor, Samuel),” IMSLP, accessed August 25, 2025, https://imslp.org/wiki/Petite_Suite_de_Concert,_Op.77_(Coleridge-Taylor,_Samuel).
  2. Matthew Mendez, “Petite Suite de Concert,” Boston Symphony Orchestra, accessed August 25, 2025, https://www.bso.org/works/petite-suite-de-concert.

Cut IDs

41507 25501 25425