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Contents:
DDD Recorded: North Transept of the Priory Church of Our Lady and St Cuthbert,Worksop duringMarch 2001, by kind permission of the vicar of Worksop, the Reverend Andrew Wagstaff SSC.- Total Time = 2.18:42 *[The harpsichord is by Adlam Burnett, 1982, after Johannes Ruckers, 1638. It is the same instrument as used on my Nightingale and Sparrow GMCD 7233.] The monumental nature of Johann Sebastian Bach’s musical genius occasionally obscures our view of his creative range. An awareness of his great cycles of church cantatas, of the Passions, the Art of Fugue, powerful organ works and the Well Tempered Clavier might suggest to us a personality whose lofty aspirations rose above the interests of common mankind. This overlooks the fact that stylised dance music formed a very large part of Bach’s output, and that these works allow us to understand better the true nature of his humanity and personality. Suites of instrumental dance pieces united by a common key were well established by the middle of the 17th century. Usually for lute or keyboard, four pieces formed the nucleus of the suite. Each represented a different national temperament, with its own character, and metrical and rhythmical patterns. In the German keyboard suite, these dances were the Allemande, serious and supposedly Germanic, the Courante, French and in a graceful, running manner, the Sarabande, dignified and Spanish in style, and a lively, skipping Gigue, perhaps based on an English dance. Other galant dances, such as Bourées, Minuets, Gavottes and Polonaises could be added between these movements. This was music to charm, to entertain and to delight; it might be played on the harpsichord either to a small group of listeners or be solely for the performer’s pleasure, perhaps on the clavichord. In his suites, Bach followed established precedent by adopting a form and style strongly influenced by 17th century French lutenists and harpsichordists. As always, he developed and transformed this model and created his own individual musical language. In three great sets of six suites for keyboard, he raised the form to new levels, achieving a perfect synthesis of French and Italianate music underpinned by his unparalled command of counterpoint. At the same time he wrote great suites of stylised dances for solo violin, for the ‘cello and others for the baroque lute. Bach’s six ‘French Suites’ are the most intimate and tenderly expressive of these collections. They appear to have been written during his years as Capellmeister to the Court of Anhalt-Cöthen. He had taken up this post at the age of thirty-two in 1717, leaving behind his organist’s position in Weimar where he had written the majority of his surviving organ works, but where the hostile atmosphere had become intolerable. Although Cöthen was a small, provincial town, and court was on a modest scale, the terms of his contract were exceptionally good, and he had the full support of his princely employer. In addition, Bach had under his control a core of skilled and well trained musicians who had recently been engaged by the court. It was a perfect opportunity for the realization of Bach’s ambitious ideas for the development of instrumental music. In 1720, Bach’s first wife, Maria Barbara Bach died. This terrible event no doubt found expression in his music; it has been suggested that the Chaconne which concludes the D-minor Partita for solo violin comments directly on this event and Bach’s reaction to it. He was left with a young family to raise, and in 1721 married Anna Magdalena Wilcke, a gifted singer already employed at Cöthen. During the following year, Anna Magdalena began a personal album of compositions written out for her by her husband. They were no doubt designed for Anna Magdalena’s pleasure and to provide a means of improving her skill as a keyboard player. At the beginning of the collection, as a gift to his new wife he wrote five short harpsichord suites in an exceptionally refined and elegant galant style, although without preludes. These are the first versions of works that ultimately would become known as the French Suites, although this name was not given to the set by Bach himself. Of all his suites, these most closely follow the early 17th century partita-variation tradition in which there is a thematic relationship between the Allemande, Courante and Gigue. Each suite has a specific quality and character derived from the ‘colour’ of the key chosen: the first in D-minor is serious and dignified, cantabile lines are emphasised in the second in C-minor. The use of B-minor for the third suite gives Bach an opportunity for writing in a style that is deeply felt and abstracted at one and the same time, a manner which he often associated with this key. The three remaining suites in major keys similarly explore the affekts of key colour. In the mellifluous key of E-flat, the melodic lines of the Allemande soar and fall through an unusually wide compass. When writing in G-major Bach comes closest to the airy grace of true dance music. With the addition of a sixth suite in the bright key of E-major, there is a sense of a brilliant culmination of the whole set. Bach’s first contact with French keyboard music was probably made during his school days in Lüneburg. There he came under the influence of Georg Böhm with whom he was to maintain a friendship until the end of Böhm’s life. From him he would have acquired his knowledge of composers such as Lebègue and Dieupart. He also “had the opportunity to go and listen to a then famous band kept by the Duke of Celle, consisting for the most part of Frenchmen; thus he acquired a thorough grounding in the French taste, which, in those regions, was at the time something quite new.” In his own suites in the new French taste he created models of compactness, variety and musical intensity in which the essential character of each dance is presented as an epitome of the type. Over a period of time, Bach returned to the original five suites, refining detail, adding movements and completing the set with a sixth suite. Bach also used them as teaching pieces for his pupils who made their own copies. Despite the process of revision and copying, these suites never arrived at a final, definitive form. Doubt must remain about the intended order of the suites, and the order and even the inclusion of some movements. The Bach family’s departure from Cöthen in 1723 seems to have been prompted by his princely patron’s forced financial retrenchment; Prince Leopold had quite simply overreached himself and was forced to economise. In taking up his new post as Cantor et Director Musices of St Thomas’s in Leipzig, Bach was hoping for greater security and professional status in an important and expanding mercantile city. During his twenty-seven year tenure of the post, much of his compositional energy was given to the creation of church music. He also devoted much of his time to teaching, and sought ways of emphasising his role as a composer and performer of keyboard music, despite not having held a post as organist since 1717. This he achieved through a great project: the publication between 1731 and 1741 of the four parts of the Clavier-Übung, or ‘Keyboard Practice’. In this collection Bach includes all the current forms of his time, including prelude, fugue, concerto, variations, chorale settings and suites. He uses the fullest range of compositional techniques, from pieces in the manner of free improvisations to strictly contrapuntal works. The collection contains no easy pieces for the performer but exploits every kind of virtuoso keyboard technique. Part one of the series, consisting of the six Partitas, appeared in 1731. These were followed in 1735 by the publication in Nuremberg of the Concerto nach Italienischen Gusto and an Ouverture nach Französischer Art, composed specifically for a two manual harpsichord. Here Bach presents archetypal models in the two most important musical styles of his time, and also demonstrates his consummate skill in writing in them. The ‘French Overture’ surpasses in scale anything of the kind that Bach had previously composed. It is in reality a suite, preceded by a huge prelude in the manner of a Lully orchestral overture. A slow introduction of rich harmonies linked by dotted phrases and punctuated by rushing scale passages passes into a long fugal section; this is completed by a third section in the manner of the opening. It is not the conclusion of the movement, however, but merely serves as an interlude before a repetition of the entire fugal section and then does duty as a final coda to the whole gigantic structure. Unusually, Bach now omits an Allemande but passes directly to a Courante, two Gavottes and two Passepieds (in each case the first of each pair to be repeated at the end of the second), a Sarabande, two Bourées (the first again to be repeated da capo) and a lively Gigue. The work is concluded by an Echo, a title describing the rapid alternation of the two keyboards of the harpsichord as Bach playfully contrasts loud passages against soft. This recording ends with the Prelude and Fugue in A-minor, BWV 894. Written in Bach’s expansive, early Italian style, the work is conceived on the largest scale. It survives in four different versions. This reflects Bach’s common practice of returning to early compositions and reworking them; it also suggests that Bach valued the work highly yet felt it could be improved by successive revisions. Derek Adlam, Welbeck, 2002 Page revised 30.06.03 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
