A partita closely resembles the dance suites of the Baroque Period; the word often occurs as a synonym of suite and variation with the addition of a prelude movement at the beginning of each partita. It was originally the name for a single-instrumental piece of music, but Johann Kuhnau, his student Christoph Graupner (1683–1760), and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) used it for collections of musical pieces, as a synonym for "suite". In the early Baroque period, the term partita referred to a string of variations or a piece in parts that reflected different dances.