French suites by Johann Sebastian Bach

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The New York Times ranked Johann Sebastian Bach 1 on its list of the world's most influential composers. His music inspired Beethoven and Mozart to create their greatest works. The legacy of Bach himself is more than a thousand works, covering all musical genres, except for opera. He is called the unsurpassed master of polyphony.

Bach's music genres

Johann Sebastian began his career composing church music in traditional religious genres, but soon moved on to more secular ones. In secular music, Bach found for himself the freedom of expression that he lacked in church music.

At first, Bach imitated the works of other composers, then he began to combine different genres in one work. The fugue allowed Bach to showcase his genius for polyphony, while the suites revealed emotional depth with just one instrument.

Bach wrote music for many different instruments, despite the fact that during his lifetime he was famous for his virtuoso organ playing. The composer wrote a lot of works for flute, violin, harpsichord and clavier.

Clavier suites

His works brought secular music to a whole new level, this is especially evident in collections of suites for the clavier. Three of them were published in total: "French Suites", "English Suites" and "Partitas for Clavier".

Throughout his career, Bach improved the structure and content of the suite, adding new parts, changing instruments and deepening the sound. These collections contain suites on which the composer worked from 1718 to 1730. They differ in form, composition and content.

In each collection there are 6 suites with the same design - they consist of four main parts. In each of the cycles, the composer adds additional parts, such as preludes. Bach's French suites are distinguished by their simplicity of composition and ease of execution.

What is a suite?

From French, suite is translated as "sequence". Historically, the suite consisted of several musical parts that contrasted strongly with each other. This formation was drawn from the tradition of combining dances - slow and solemn immediately after lively and light ones.

Then the suite became less contrasting. The standard composition of chamber suites developed in the seventeenth century in Germany, partly strengthened by Bach himself. Today the composition consists of four parts:

• allemande;
• chimes;
• sarabande;
• zhiga.

Each of these parts represents an old dance.

Suite elements

Allemande –the name of a dance especially popular during the Baroque period. It comes from the French word allemande, which means "German". The roots of this progenitor of the w altz come from Germany in the 16th century. Bach's French suites are distinguished by the fact that the composer experimented a lot with the allemande, sometimes making it sound like a prelude.

Courante is a French dance popular in the 16th century, characterized by a fast pace. During the time of Johann Sebastian Bach, the couranta lost its popularity, but remained an element of the suite, in which the composer concentrated the emotional load of the work.

Sarabanda is a Spanish folk dance. Its original form was too frivolous and frank, and the church, unable to forbid, decided to ennoble it, turning it into a funeral melody with a reduced tempo. In the time of Bach, the sarabande became popular again, but in a significantly "cultivated" form.

Giga is another baroque dance with roots in England. This is the only element of the suite that has never been a high society dance. The first French suite in C minor stands out because Bach completely changed the tempo of the gigue.

Besides these four obligatory movements, the suite may contain a prelude and an additional movement, usually played between the last two.

Bach French Suites

The composer himself did not name his suites, Johann Forkel, the first biographer of Bach, called them "French". He mentioned that these sixpieces of music are written in the French style of harpsichord music.

Of all the suites written by the composer, the French suites are the simplest in terms of content and performance. However, they are not as simple in composition as the English ones, and not as complex as the partitas that Bach composed. The French suites, whose allemande sometimes looks like a prelude, apart from deviations in the usual rhythm, contain a few more optional parts between the sarabande and the gigue. Although the composer always remained faithful to the standard scheme: first the allemande, then the courante, followed by the sarabande, after which one or more additional elements, and at the end of the suite - a gigue.

Contents of the cycle of French suites

The cycle of French suites consists of six works, differing in numbers or names of keys:

• The first is the suite in D minor. It consists of allemande, chimes, sarabande, minuet and gigue. Moreover, the latter is distinguished by a completely different pace - 2/2.
• Second - suite in C minor. In it, between the sarabande and the gigue, there are three optional parts - one aria and two minuets.
• Third - French suite in B minor. A remarkable suite with three additional movements, a gavotte, a minuet and a trio.
• The fourth is a suite in E-flat major. In addition to the main parts, it also contains a gavotte, an aria and a minuet.
• Fifth - suite in G major. In it, between the last two obligatory elements, there are gavotte, lura and bourre.
• Sixth - suite in E major with additional gavotte, polonaise, bourre andminuet.

Despite the fact that Bach did not deviate from the usual composition, his suites are full of innovations and outside influences typical of a composer. They are full of new rhythms, melodies and even polyphony. Between the sarabande and the gigue, you can hear a gavotte, polonaise or minuet, and the sarabande itself in all six suites is extremely melodic and emotional.