Les Nations, 3rd Ordre, for chamber ensemble, "L "Imperiale"

"L'Imperiale" opens with a sonata section in the Italian style Couperin admired, built from contrasting slow and fast movements for two treble instruments (often violins) over a bass line realized by harpsichord or other chordal instrument, called basso continuo.

After the opening sonata, the piece moves into a suite of French dance movements, the second half of the "ordre." These typically include an allemande, a courante, a sarabande, a gavotte, a gigue, and a chaconne or passacaille, each a short, self-contained character piece built from a repeating dance rhythm rather than developed themes.

Listen for the difference in temperament between the two halves: the opening sonata movements are more exploratory, with weaving imitative lines passed between the two treble parts, while the dance movements that follow are more compact and rhythmically pointed, each stamped with the gait of its dance. The sarabande tends to be the emotional center, slow and stately, while the gigue or chaconne near the end brings the suite to a lively close. Ornamentation, the small trills and turns Couperin notated in great detail, colors nearly every phrase.

Couperin wrote "Les Nations" as a set of four "ordres" (orderings), published in 1726, each pairing an Italian-style trio sonata with a suite of French dances. "L'Imperiale" is the third of the four. Couperin had long admired the sonatas of Corelli and other Italian composers, and he later explained that his early trio sonatas in that style, written under a pseudonym, were his way of testing whether French audiences would accept Italian music under a French name. By the time he assembled "Les Nations," French taste had grown more receptive, and Couperin presented the pieces openly as a fusion of the two national styles, French elegance joined to Italian sonata form. The collection remains one of the notable attempts by a French composer of the era to reconcile the two rival traditions.