The French overture is a musical form

Musical form

The term musical form refers to the overall structure or plan of a piece of music, and it describes the layout of a composition as divided into sections...

 widely used in the Baroque

Baroque music

Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...

 period. Its basic formal division is into two parts, which are usually enclosed by double bars and repeat signs. They are complementary in styles (slow in dotted rhythms and fast in fugal

Fugue

In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....

 style), and the first ends with a half-cadence (i.e., on a dominant harmony) that requires an answering structure with a tonic ending. The second section often but not always ends with a brief recollection of the first, sometimes even repeating some of its melodic content (Waterman and Anthony 2001).

The form is first encountered in Jean-Baptiste Lully

Jean-Baptiste Lully

Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...

's ballet overtures from the 1650s (Waterman and Anthony 2001). Later examples can be found as the opening movement of each of Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

's Orchestral Suites

Orchestral suites (Bach)

The four Orchestral Suites or Ouvertures BWV 1066–1069 are a set of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, probably composed between 1725 and 1739 in Leipzig...

, Partita in D major, BWV 828, C minor Cello Suite, BWV 1011, and as an opening to many oratorio

Oratorio

An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...

s by George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...

 (including Messiah

Messiah (Handel)

Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...

). The 16th of Bach's Goldberg Variations

Goldberg Variations

The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, is a work for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, consisting of an aria and a set of 30 variations. First published in 1741, the work is considered to be one of the most important examples of variation form...

is a miniature French overture.

The French overture should not be confused with the Italian overture

Italian overture

The Italian overture is a piece of orchestral music with which in the late 17th and early 18th centuries several operas, oratorios and other large-scale works opened....

, a three-part quick-slow-quick structure.