Partita is a set of 13 very short movements, all of which refer to pre-existing, and very old, genres: fanfares, songs, musettes, dances, and a chorale. The form is best understood as a kind of disrupted rondo. The musettes function as the rondo theme, alternating with dances and songs. The increasingly long fanfare movements break into this neat symmetrical structure with increasing frequency, and come to dominate the piece. In the last movement the soloist leaves the stage, and the strings play new chorale material while memories of trumpet fanfares are heard from afar.