Many different dance types existed in the Baroque era. What distinguished them were features originally associated with the dance steps — a certain meter, a distinctive tempo, and some rhythmic attributes. The minuet, for example, is a simple dance in triple time at a moderate tempo. The slower sarabande is a little more intricate; also in triple time, it has an accent on the second beat of the measure, as well as the normal accent on the first.
The custom all over Europe was to group a collection of miscellaneous dances together in a genre called the suite. Which dances occurred in a suite was not subject to any general rule, nor was there any specified order. But all the dances in a suite kept to the same key, and the last of them was always fast — frequently a gigue, a dance in compound meter that may have been derived from the Irish jig. Otherwise there was no standard overall structure to a suite.
Composers also wrote a great many dances and dance suites for the lute or the harpsichord. These are stylized dances, pieces written in the style and form of dance music but intended for listening rather than dancing, for mental rather than physical pleasure. Compared with dances written for the actual dance floor, stylized ones naturally allowed for more musical elaboration and refinement, while still retaining some of the typical features of the various dance-