Tafelmusik

[citation needed] In solemn banquets, starting with wedding dinners, the presence of singers and instrumentalists is customary and almost obligatory.

The short compositions of Gioachino Rossini, a composer who also gained fame as a gourmet, titled "antipasto" and "dessert" are recognized as related to "table music".

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially in Germany and France, the style seduced composers until it was characterized as a true musical genre, in the form of a dance suite.

For example, the lutenist and harpist of the Palatine Concert in Bologna is assigned the “task of charming, with delicate instrumental dances, the ears of illustrious guests during lunch” and dinner.

[1] Some of the most significant composers of table music included Johann Hermann Schein, whose Banchetto musicale of 1617 acquired considerable fame, and Michael Praetorius, who wrote about the phenomenon of Tafelmusik in his Syntagma musicum of 1619.