Allemande

An allemande (Italian: allemanda) is a dance that was popular in Baroque music of the 17th and early 18th centuries. The word comes from the French word for "German".

Composers of the Baroque period often wrote a group of dances called a suite. There was usually an allemande, a courante, a sarabande and a gigue, in that order. Sometimes there were one or two other dances as well. Sometimes a suite started with a prelude (an introductory movement) before the allemande.

The allemande was played at a moderate speed - not very fast, nor very slow. There were usually 4 beats in a bar (4/4 time) but also sometimes in 2/2 time, and it started with an anacrusis (an upbeat, i.e. one, or possibly a small group of notes which were not on the first beat of a bar).