Francois Couperin, a Parisian author, is considered the greatest harpsichordist in history along with J.S.Bach and Domenico Scarlatti. His great instrumental work consists of 27 Suites called Ordres in which characters, mostly female, are delicately depicted as refined psychological portraits of women, something unheard of in instrumental music of the time.
Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the French Suites, so misnamed by a noted musicologist of the time to distinguish them from the English ones, actually drawing inspiration from Italian taste The fifth is considered the most elegant and “Italian” of all. Unlike Couperin, he usually adopts the names of dances. The themes are very singable, sweet and melodic.
Definitely for piano the sonata in A bem major. by Franz Joseph Haydn: long sounds, we are about 50 years ahead, and by now the keyboard instrument that composers turn to is no longer the harpsichord.
Claude Debussy wrote L’isle joieuse, a piano piece with a “symphonic” structure to which he imprinted an atmosphere of great excitement and poignant expectation, depicting a multitude in motion in preparation for a journey, as he wrote “…among Italian masks and dancing young women.”