Angela Hewitt XI Program Notes

Angela Hewitt XI 92nd Street Y, April 30, 2020 Notes by Harry Haskell JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Four Duets, BWV 802-805 No. 1 in E Minor No. 2 in F Major No. 3 in G major No. 4 in A Minor Eighteen Little Preludes Prelude in C Major, BWV 924 Prelude in D Major, BWV 925 Prelude in D Minor, BWV 926 Prelude in F Major, BWV 927 Prelude in F Major, BWV 928 Prelude in G Minor, BWV 930 Prelude in C Major, BWV 933 Prelude in C Minor, BWV 934 Prelude in D Minor, BWV 935 Prelude in D Major, BWV 936 Prelude in E Major, BWV 937 Prelude in E Minor, BWV 938 Prelude in C Major, BWV 939 Prelude in D Minor, BWV 940 Prelude in E Minor, BWV 941 Prelude in A Minor, BWV 942 Prelude in C Major, BWV 943 Prelude in C Minor, BWV 999 Fantasia and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 944 Italian Concerto in F Major, BWV 971 [no tempo marking] Andante Presto French Overture in B Minor, BWV 831 Ouverture Courante Gavottes I and II Passepieds I and II Sarabande BourrĂŠes I and II

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Gigue Echo Johann Sebastian Bach Born in Eisenach, March 21, 1685; died in Leipzig, July 28, 1750 Four Duets, BWV 802-805 Composed before 1739; 13 minutes These four so-called duets appeared in 1739 in Part 3 of Bach’s Clavierübung (Keyboard Practice). This monumental publication is not a set of exercises, as the title might suggest, but rather a compendious survey of mid-eighteenth-century keyboard styles, genres, and forms. Published in four installments between 1731 and 1741, it afforded an opportunity for Bach to display his formidable prowess as composer and performer alike. The first volume, which Bach self-published as his opus 1, consisted of the six Partitas (sometimes called German Suites) for single-manual harpsichord. Part 2-written, like the Goldberg Variations that comprise the fourth volume, for a harpsichord with two keyboards--comprised a bravura “Concerto after the Italian Taste” (the so-called Italian Concerto) and a more suavely ornate “Overture in the French Style.” Part 3 was a collection of chorales and other pieces for organ.

The title “duet,” as Bach uses it here, denotes not a work written for two players but a two-part solo piece characterized by imitative counterpoint—that is, music in which the two voices “imitate” each other, using the same basic thematic material. What the contemporary theorist Johann Mattheson called “an artful, fugued duet” was in essence a more elaborate and sophisticated version of the two-part Inventions that Bach had written some two decades earlier. Thus, the First Duet is an intricate double fugue with not one but two subjects—the first a fast, angular melody, the second consisting of leaping eighth notes—which Bach ingeniously combines, inverts, and bounces from one voice to the other. Further examples of his contrapuntal legerdemain are found in the lyrical Second Duet (patterned after a da capo aria, with the first part encored after the second), the rushing cataracts of sixteenth notes in No. 3, and the statelier, more formal fugue of No. 4.

Eighteen Little Preludes Composed around 1720; time 24 minutes Like “duet,” the term “prelude” had no one fixed meaning in Bach’s time. A prelude could be the first movement of an instrumental suite, a companion piece to a keyboard fugue, or the preamble to the singing of a chorale in church. There was also in the Baroque era a long tradition of free-standing preludes, typically designed to show off a composer’s improvisational skills. (Indeed, the German word präludieren meant “to improvise.”) Bach was a master improviser, celebrated for his ability to spontaneously translate his musical thoughts into sound; many of his preludes, fantasias, and similar works are essentially written-down extemporizations. Upon hearing him improvise at the organ console as a young man, the eminent Dutch organist Johann Adam Reincken declared, “I thought that this art was dead, but I see that in you it still lives.”

These eighteen short preludes likely date from Bach’s tenure as director of music to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen from 1717 to 1723. It was during this happy period

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that he wrote much of his most beloved instrumental music, including the six Brandenburg Concertos, the suites and sonatas for unaccompanied violin and cello, and the harpsichord Inventions and Sinfonias. Like the latter two collections, the keyboard preludes had a didactic purpose; two of them appear in the notebooks that the composer compiled for his wife, Anna Magdalena, and their son, Wilhelm Friedemann. Indeed, some scholars speculate that W. F. Bach actually wrote the Prelude in D Major, BWV 925.

The preludes run the gamut of keyboard techniques and expression. BWV 924, for example, combines broken, or arpeggiated, chords with finnicky ornaments known as mordents. The ensuing D-Major Prelude challenges the player to sustain a lyrical line in leisurely sixteenth notes that flow from one hand to the other, while the D-Minor Prelude is all about economy and evenness of touch. (Bach reportedly “played with so easy and small a motion of the fingers that it was hardly perceptible.”) The two F-Major Preludes, BWV 927 and 928, focus on clarity of articulation and the contrast between linear and chordal textures. And so it goes, up to the concluding Prelude in C Minor, whose broken figurations over a slow-moving harmonic bass were originally conceived for lute.

Fantasia and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 944 Date of composition unknown; 7 minutes The pairing of an improvisatory, free-form fantasia or prelude with a rigorously contrapuntal fugue was one that appealed to Bach throughout his life, most famously in the forty-eight preludes and fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavier. The first section of this highly virtuosic work illustrates the improvisatory genius that Bach displayed in his “unpremeditated fantasies” according to his early biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel.

The Fantasia consists of a mere ten measures notated in bare-bones block chords that the performer is invited to flesh out. It sets the stage for a monumental three-voice fugue, based on a long, somewhat meandering theme whose relentless sixteenth-note pulse energizes the entire piece. Bach’s music abounds in surprising twists and turns; at times it sounds as if he himself is not quite sure where his fancy is leading us.

Italian Concerto in F Major, BWV 971 Composed before 1735; 13 minutes Bach’s Italian Concerto is not a concerto in the modern sense but a solo piece in the Baroque tradition of “concerted” music, featuring vivid contrasts of texture, dynamics, or instrumentation. In Part 2 of the Clavierübung, the “Concerto after the Italian Taste” is paired with the French Overture as exemplars of the two dominant instrumental styles of Bach’s day. BWV 971 begins and ends with bracing F-major fast movements in cut time. Central to both is the contrast between soft and loud passages that was typical of eighteenth-century Italian orchestral music. Bach creates this dynamic effect both texturally--for example, by alternating full chords with spare two-part counterpoint--and by the judicious use of stops on the two-manual harpsichord. Now and then, he tightens the harmonic screws to simulate the effect of a crescendo. In each of the outer movements, the main theme is short and returns repeatedly, in the style of a ritornello. In the middle Andante, however, the richly embroidered, Italianate melody in D minor unfolds in leisurely aria fashion above a simple bass line that glides along in steady eighth notes.

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French Overture in B Minor, BWV 831 Composed in 1735; 37 minutes Bach showed a serious and sustained interest in the suite throughout his career. It was characteristic of his methodical approach to composition that he used the form both as an organizational device and as a pedagogical tool. A suite in all but name, the “Overture in the French Style” has no fewer than eleven movements, almost all in B minor, starting with an expansive French overture—a slow, majestic introduction, replete with flourishes, followed by a lively fugue and closing with a more ornate version of the opening section. A vigorous Courante provides light relief, and from then on the emphasis is on dance movements: a pair of Gavottes, with their characteristic long-shortshort upbeat figure, and a pair of Passepieds in triple meter, both sets moving from minor to major and back again; a gracious Sarabande; two briskly four-square Bourrées; and a high-stepping Gigue, characterized by a jerky dotted figure in 6/8 time. Bach’s listeners, like us, would have expected the suite to end there. But he had one more trick up his sleeve: a genial character piece featuring the echo effects that could be achieved on a harpsichord with two keyboards and corresponding ranks of strings.

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