Angela Hewitt X 92nd Street Y, Nov. 2, 2019 Notes by Harry Haskell JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) English Suite No. 4 in F Major, BWV 809 Prélude Allemande Courante Sarabande Menuets I and II Gigue English Suite No. 5 in E Minor, BWV 810 Prélude Allemande Courante Sarabande Passepieds I and II Gigue English Suite No. 6 in D Minor, BWV 811 Prélude Allemande Courante Sarabande and Double Gavottes I and II Gigue Sonata in D Major, BWV 963 Johann Sebastian Bach Born in Eisenach, March 21, 1685; died in Leipzig, July 28, 1750 English Suite No. 4 in F Major, BWV 809 Composed before 1720; 21 minutes Bach’s keyboard music reflected a synthesis of the learnedly contrapuntal German idiom, the melodious, extraverted Italian style, and the French penchant for florid, speech-like arioso. He studied and admired the works of François Couperin and his fellow claveciniste composers, whose harpsichord music demanded exceptional lightness and evenness of touch to achieve its characteristic blend of delicacy and brilliance. These same qualities are evident in the many didactic works for the clavier (the generic German term for a keyboard instrument) that Bach wrote in the years before and just after his move to Leipzig in 1723, including the Inventions and Sinfonias, the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier, and the so-called English Suites and French Suites. The latter,
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according to his early biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel, received their nicknames “because they are written in the French taste. By design, the composer is here less learned than in his other suites, and has mostly used a pleasing, more predominant melody.” Compared to the French Suites, the six English Suites--which are believed to date from Bach’s years as cappellmeister, or director of music, to the ducal court in Weimar between 1714 and 1717--are more substantial in proportions and more overtly virtuosic in character. Yet they are no less indebted to the ornate French Baroque idiom and may owe their misleading moniker to the fact that they were “made for an Englishman of rank,” as Forkel suggested. (Another theory is that they were modeled on harpsichord works published in London.) In fact, Bach himself doesn’t appear to have used the title by which the suites are now known; he called them simply “Suites avec Préludes”—French for “suites with preludes”—as distinct from the later and lighter-weight French Suites, in which the introductory movement is omitted. In other respects, however, the English Suites conform to the classical pattern of the instrumental dance suite as it evolved in France, Germany, and elsewhere in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Each suite is built around a core group of courtly dances consisting of a stately allemande, a vivacious courante, a broadly lyrical sarabande, and a bouncy gigue. By convention, all four of these dances within a given suite are in the same key, although they are seldom related thematically. Bach varies the mix by inserting other dances, chiefly of a lighter character, after the obligatory sarabande: the last three English Suites feature, respectively, pairs of minuets, passepieds, and gavottes. The flexibility of the suite format also gave Bach license to insert special companion movements. The Sarabande of the Sixth Suite, for example, is followed by richly embellished variation in the French manner known as a double. The Suite No. 4 in F Major opens with a bravura exercise in imitative counterpoint, reminding us that Bach was both a master improviser and a widely acclaimed virtuoso on the harpsichord and organ. The Prélude’s imitative texture, with one voice following in another’s footsteps at a respectful distance, arises from a lively patter of running sixteenth notes set against skipping figures in dotted rhythm that both accentuate and relieve the music’s headlong momentum. The rhythmically supple Allemande mingles sixteenth-note duplets and triplets with swirling thirty-second notes; in the movement’s second half, Bach ingeniously inverts the soprano theme and transfers it to the left hand. The Courante’s light-footed athleticism contrasts with the plushly embroidered stateliness of the Sarabande. The two Menuets (played da capo style, with the first repeated after the second) project subtly different characters, despite their common key signature and triple-time motion. Last but not least comes a vivacious and slightly jerky Gigue, built on broken triads. English Suite No. 5 in E Minor, BWV 810 Composed before 1720; 24 minutes The Prélude of the E-Minor Suite takes the form of a fully developed fugue: the halting, lightly syncopated melodic subject in 6/8 meter migrates from voice to voice, a continuous, if only intermittently audible, thread that binds Bach’s intricate contrapuntal fabric together. The Allemande’s characteristically clipped opening–a dotted eighth note preceded by a sixteenth-note upbeat--highlights the solid, foursquare character of this traditional “German” dance. A similar upbeat figure launches the fleet, triple-time
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Courante. Indeed, there is a discernible family resemblance between the themes of the second and third movements, almost as if Bach was going out of his way to impose a modicum of unity on the diversity that is intrinsic to the suite format. Unlike its ornate counterpart in the F-Major Suite, the E-Minor Sarabande is notably chaste, with its unruffled eighth-note pulse and lack of ornamental frills. It is followed by a pair of lilting Passepieds in 3/8 time, the first in the home key, the second in the parallel major, and the suite closes with an airy, buoyant Gigue. English Suite No. 6 in D Minor, BWV 811 Composed before 1720; 28 minutes The pattern of the Fourth and Fifth Suites is broadly replicated in the Sixth. This time, however, Bach treats us to a substantially longer and more elaborately structured Prélude. The first of its two main sections has the ruminative character of a written-out improvisation, while the second is a densely argued essay in linear counterpoint. The DMinor Allemande and Courante, replete with turning figures and other melodic embellishments, reflect a similarly rigorous approach. Bach relaxes a bit in the melodious, highly chromatic Sarabande and its pendant double, the latter illustrating Forkel’s observation that he “introduced so much variety in his performance that under his hand every piece was as it were like a discourse.” Of the two strutting Gavottes in duple meter, the first is in the home key, the second in D major (followed by a da capo reprise of the minor-key dance). The Sixth Suite ends as it began, with a bracingly contrapuntal Gigue characterized by torrential triplets and sparkling trills. Sonata in D Major, BWV 963 Composed about 1704; 9 minutes This early specimen of Bach’s precocious genius dates from his tenure as a journeyman church organist in Arnstadt, an undemanding post that left a good deal of spare time for composing. The Sonata in D Major is one of several such works that seem to have been modeled on the recently published keyboard sonatas of Johann Kuhnau. At this stage in its development, the instrumental sonata had much in common with the suite, its alternating fast and slow movements typically including one or two fugues or uptempo pieces in the manner of gigues. However, the early Baroque sonata was freer in character and less dependent on dance forms than the suite; a contemporary musical dictionary defined the genre as music written “according to the composer’s fancy.” The D-Major Sonata consists of three substantial fast movements separated by brief adagio interludes that function structurally as tonal bridges (from D major to B minor and back again). The opening allegro is built on two closely linked thematic ideas that are presented back to back in the first eight bars and recur thereafter in sundry guises and combinations. The propulsive subject of the central B-minor fugue is set in motion by an energetic leap, in contrast to the last movement’s monotonously cackling fugal “Thema all’ imitatio Gallina Cuccu” (Theme in Imitation of the Hen and Cuckoo), which may have been inspired by the whimsically onomatopeic music of contemporary Italian and German composers.
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