suite no. 3 in e minor (from six baroque suites)

Following on from the first and second suites, suite no. 3 in e minor is a contemporary work in baroque style that Reddy completed in August 1984. The six dances (or movements) are Prelude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue, Ground. Reddy went on to write three more baroque suites, and then many years later, in 2006. he typeset the original handwritten manuscript, making minor notational changes.

suite no. 3 was completed in August 1984 while the composer was teaching at the University of Durban-Westville (UDW) and is based on the German musical letters ‘C-H-E’ (C-B-natural-E) that occur in the name Christine. Christine Lucia was a colleague of Reddy’s at at UDW and was present when he premiered it along with suites 1 and 2 at UDW on 27 September 1984. The suite, which is dedicated to Lucia, is the most tragic in the whole set of six, which collectively describe an emotional arc of naive innocence to descent into despair and a slow return to hope. The final ‘Ground’ (a chaconne) of suite no. 3 ends abruptly after a quotation from J.S. Bach’s St John Passion.