baroque suite question

[bonnerik]

in most of handels suites, it says if the piece is a courante or a sarabande etc, but sometimes it only says adagi/allegro etc. most of the time it says so if its a fugue, but sometimes a suite is full of only tempo markings, and i wonder if those are in sonata form ?

his suite in f major puzzles me:

suite starts on page 17

https://conquest.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/b/b0/IMSLP18735-PMLP44355-HG_Band_2.pdf

the first one is a prelude right ? and the second one is in sonata form ? the third one i dont know.

hope someone can help me out!

[j_menz]

Courantes, Sarabandes, Gigues, Allemandes, Minuets, Bourrees etc were all dances.  The tempo is really a matter of it being appropriate for the dance in question. 

Someone has probably done a list of tempi somewhere, but really the best way to learn these is to head off to Youtube and listen to a bunch of them and get a feel for what's an acceptable range.

[brogers70]

The only one of the movements I can identify as a dance is the third, which is a sarabande. I don't think this suite is really a typical dance suite. It has more of the baroque four movement sonata form (slow-fast-slow-fast), like, for example Bach's sonatas for violin and keyboard.

The second movement is just in binary form; it would not qualify as classical sonata-allegro form.

[j_menz]

I don't think this suite is really a typical dance suite.

That's true. Handel wasn't a stickler for formal conventions in any of his suites. It may even just be four things he thought sounded good together without any form beyond that.