Suite for String Quartet

Picture the scene: it is the eighteenth century, a German town - Leipzig perhaps. J S Bach is just returning from the church where he has been practising the hymns for Sunday. He walks home for lunch past the coffee-house, where some country folk are having a dance. As he continues he passes a big house set back from the road, where a dancing master is giving the young ladies lessons; his violin is heard through the open window. An organ grinder is playing in the square, his monkey capering in the street. Bach enters his front door, calls to his wife “I’ll skip lunch, darling!” and retires to his study (well he does have seventeen children!), where he writes a Suite including all the dances he has heard - a Sarabande, a Minuet, an Allemande, a Gigue.
Fast forward through the ages now to Tonbridge in 1989. A composer returns home through
the High Street. He passes Our Price Records... the Medway School of Dancing...T he Griddle
Coffee Bar... The Afsana Tandoori Restaurant.... Reaching home, he sits down to write a suite.
This is it.