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Join The Student Room TodayBe part of the UK's largest and fastest growing student community. It's free to join and a lot of fun - Get inspired, express your ideas, interact and share Revision:JS Bach: Orchestral Suite in No.3 in D major, BWV 1068From The Student RoomTSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > Music Revision Notes > Revision:JS Bach: Orchestral Suite in No.3 in D major, BWV 1068 This is a set work for the post-2008 OCR GCE AS/A-level in Music, for AS Unit G353 'Introduction to Historical Study in Music'. It may come up as the main focus in Section B, and it may be a part of one of the Section C essays. Of the five movements, only the first, second and final movements (Ouverture, Air, Gigue) need to be studied for Unit G353. There are four Orchestral Suites written by JS Bach, probably composed in Leipzig in the 1720s, although it is very likely to have been arranged from other pieces previously composed; many composers of the Baroque era 'borrowed' from themselves. The first performance was probably given by the Collegium Musicum (a club of musicians and music enthusiasts to which Bach belonged) in 1729 and 1731. The suites are catalogued BWV 1066-1069; BWV stands for Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, German for 'Bach Works Catalogue', which is a standard non-chronological catalogue created in the 19th and 20th centuries for JS Bach's music.
Overall FormThe copies of the scores (no autograph score survives, though there are instrumental parts in Bach's hand) are not named as 'Orchestral Suite No.3 in D major' in German. They are simply pieces of music named:
As the first movement is dubbed 'Ouverture' (French for Overture), the piece as a whole is often called the 'Ouverture in D major'. These movements do however form a coherent form of music, with the 'Ouverture' as an opening and a 'Gigue' as a closing, called a suite. A suite comprises a set of dances, though by the 18th century the music was primarily to be performed and listened to rather than danced to. The Air is not a dance movement, but rather the French translation for 'Aria'. The Gavotte, Bourrée and Gigue are all actual dances, which Bach would very likely have seen performed. A Baroque suite would generally almost all be in the same key, here D major, though there could be several of the movements in a related key such as the relative minor. The consistency of tonality was the only unifying factor; there was no thematic material that kept cropping up across the movements. Each movement itself is self-contained, and uses a single thematic idea. This is quite characteristic of Baroque melodic development, which aims to develop a single mood, called the Affekt in German, or affect (not a spelling error). It is a point of contrast between the Baroque and Classical aesthetics; in the Classical era, it is the tension between two opposing ideas or even keys that constitutes the drama.
Individual Structures'Ouverture'French OvertureThe use of the French language stems from the French-derived association of this genre of dance music, the suite. With it comes a 'French overture', beloved of Italian-born French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, and of his patron, King Louis XIV of France; such a style of overture opened all the 'tragédies en musique' (i.e. tragic operas in French) that Lully composed. It comprises:
The French overture form was adopted by many late Baroque composers as Versailles rose to become the capital of fashionable artistic taste. Purcell uses it to open many of his masques and operas; Handel uses the French overture style to open his operas and oratorios; Bach also employed it for his Passions and many of his cantatas. The dotted notes themselves are referenced in Vivaldi's Gloria in D (RV 589) in the Domine Fili unigenite; Bach wrote an extended Overture in the French style (BWV 831) for solo two-manual harpsichord as well as recombining the form into a fugue using dotted notes for the D major fugue of Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier (BWV 850). The form even persists into the Rococo operas of Hasse and into some of Mozart's symphonies (the slow dotted part anyway, e.g. his No.36 in C major, the Linz).
AnalysisIn the opening section, marked ‘grave’, the tonic key of D major is established with two tonic pedals (bars 1-32 and 4-61), interpolated by the dominant 7th. The initial tonic pedal sets up considerable tension as the harmonies unfold above, progressively becoming more dissonant with the pedal: D major, B minor, E minor seventh (Em7), A dominant seventh (A7). By the last chord, the D is so dissonant that it forces the tonic pedal to resolve to C# by bar 33 as a bass suspension. The trumpets and drums reinforce these harmonic tensions, although they drop out as the music modulates to the dominant A major (bar 6), then passing through the supertonic E minor (bar 9) and the submediant relative minor B minor (bar 13). At this point, the harmonic tension is further increased as the F# major chord leads not to the expected perfect cadence in B minor, but a chord of B major with a prominent D# in the bass. This acts as a pivot chord, leaning towards E major, which leads to a perfect cadence in A major (bar 17), reintroducing the brass and timpani. The subdominant G major is touched upon for the next two bars, before returning back to the tonic. The section ends on an imperfect cadence, ready to lead to the repeat of the opening or the next section: the fugue. The fugue is for four voices, corresponding mainly to the string parts. The oboes double the upper parts, the trumpets add harmonic emphasis, while the timpani add impact to fugal climaxes. The 1.5-bar subject, which is the principal theme in a fugue, is announced by the first violins. The answer, the adjusted form of the subject, is a real answer, having been transposed down exactly a perfect fifth from the subject (the subject's G is answered by C natural, outside the tonic key of D major). It enters in the second violins, while above it in the texture a countersubject is played in the first violins. A sequence between the two violin parts is added before the third entry of the subject in the violas; above this, a second countersubject is played in the first violins while the second violins take the first countersubject. The tonality here is emphasised by the strong movement through the circle of fifths. The end of the exposition occurs when the last voice, the continuo, finishes its statement of the answer; here, the first violins have continued onto a new, third countersubject that accompanies the second countersubject (second violins), the first countersubject (violas), and the answer. The countersubjects have distinctive features that mark them out as aurally distinctive, compared to the jaunty quaver-semiquaver-semiquaver rhythm through the subject:
The densely imitative counterpoint of the fugue continues to develop the thematic material found in the exposition, even changing which voice takes which theme, an example of invertible counterpoint. In bars 32-35, the subject in the first violins is above all three of the countersubjects, with countersubject two above countersubject three. Such invertible counterpoint allows the exposition to extend to bar 42. Several middle entries of the subject and answer occur in related keys, maintaining interest using by modulation. These end with the final entries in bars 89-107, which are a reworking of bars 24-42 in a fuller texture. Interspersed among the strict imitation are episodes, composed of freer counterpoint that expands and develops earlier thematic material in a lighter texture. One example is the development of the second countersubject in bar 42, which also allows modulation into the relative minor, as confirmed by the subject's entry in bar 50. The fugue's structure can be summarised thus:
AirThe suite as a whole is perhaps most famous today for its second movement, the Air. In the 19th-century arrangement by August Wilhelmj in C major, it is widely known as the 'Air on the G-string' as the melody line can be played wholly on the lowest string of the violin, the G-string. This is often played in a highly Romantic style, with much vibrato. There have been other versions; French jazz pianist Jacques Loussier’s version was used in a cigar advert. Its lyrical melody acts as Baroque version of a wordless, instrumental aria, which unfolds slowly, almost infinitely so. The air’s long opening semibreve, as a rhythmic device, can give the impression of eternity. But it is the walking bass that provides the forward momentum; the C# and A in bar 1 act as passing notes in the bass. The incessant quaver movement acts to unify the piece as well as to provide momentum, giving great balance of mood throughout the piece. The texture is not nearly as dense as the preceding overture, but it retains much of its polyphonic texture; the second violin and viola both have melodic fragments that answer the phrases in the main melody, creating an effect of antiphony. The melodic construction makes great use of suspensions, which provide moments of harmonic tension within the air. The first one comes as bar 1 gives way to bar 2; the F# becomes dissonant with the changed harmony in bar 21, but is resolved by bar 23. However, in the intervening beat the melody is decorated by semiquavers on B, G, and an appoggiatura on F# just before the resolution of this 7-6 suspension to the E. There are many such highly decorated suspensions in the music – the viola has ones in bars 3 and 4; the second violin in bars 5 and 6. The decoration also extends into ornamentation, some of which Bach has written out and prescribed, but much of which can be added by the players in line with Baroque performance practice. The air is structured within a binary movement framework:
But its tonal plan allows it to maintain great interest:
The melodic sequence of bars 13-14 serves as a modulating sequence, and increases tension via its chromaticism, progressing from the dominant in first inversion to the tonic in each key. It also marks some contrast, as the sequence is ascending, whilst much of the rest of the piece uses descending melodies and bass lines. Again, the walking bass shares these features with the texture as a whole, acting as a microcosm; however, its constant quaver movement provides some continuity, despite the rate of harmonic change increasing from a steady 2-chords-per-bar to a 4-chords-per-bar in the sequence.
GigueThe French for (and therefore classier version of) ‘jig’, the gigue movement is a genuine Baroque dance. As such, it is in binary form, with promotes unity of Affekt:
The melody is much less densely packed with motifs than in the overture, like in the air. The motion is additionally more conjunct. The regular phrase structure consists mainly of four-bar phrases, highlighted by the changes in orchestration, especially in the use of trumpets. Bach does vary the pattern towards the end of sections, with a 5-bar + 3-bar phrase structure from bar 16 leading to the perfect cadence in the dominant A major. The texture here is predominantly homophonic, typical of this genre, with either melody-dominated homophony or melody-and-accompaniment. There are nonetheless instances of invertible counterpoint, e.g. bars 18-20 and bars 66-68, though there is no fugal writing, not even any imitation. There is also a lack of syncopation, which fits this gigue into a more rustic form, derived from Celtic fiddle jigs, English country jigs and with influences from the Italian ‘giga’. Tonally, the gigue touches all of the keys adjacent to D major on the circle of fifths. The tonal plan consists of:
The harmony is primarily diatonic, with some hints of chromaticism, for example in bars 18-20. Sequences are also used; an interesting example is bars 66-72, which is the contrapuntal inversion of bars 19-24. The chromatic sequence in the second section lasts an extra bar than in the first, which allows the music to arrive back in the tonic key.
OrchestrationThis orchestral suite is scored separately for each individual movement, depending on the affect to be projected. But the instrumentation suggests that this piece was to be performed outdoors. The 'ouverture' is scored for:
At the Thomaskirche (Church of St Thomas) in Leipzig, where Bach worked, the players available only numbered about 20. But adding the school players, those from the university where the Collegium Musicum was based, and some municipal players allowed the number to increase to over 50. Often, modern recordings will have their own interpretations of the forces appropriate. Before the uptake of the 'Early Music Revival' in the later 20th century, most recordings lacked a chordal instrument such as a harpsichord, as Bach's highly contrapuntal texture was deemed thick enough already. Some post-'Early Music Revival' recordings use small numbers of strings to each part, heightening transparency; others double the 'cello bass line with bassoons to promote the double reed timbre of the oboes. The natural trumpets Bach used would be limited mostly to the notes of the natural harmonic series, so they would certainly be tuned in a certain key, here in D (i.e. the fundamental note of the trumpets was a D). These would be always written in C. The clarino technique of reaching very high notes where the pitches to form scalic passages become available was well-established, though still tiring for players compared to fanfare passages lower down the register. The timpani, which almost invariably accompany trumpets in the Baroque, are tuned to the tonic and dominant of the key, here D and A; they are not retunable by pedal, unlike modern timpani. As such, they tend to drop out during modulations, but strongly reinforce the tonic key in tutti sections. The doubling of the oboes with the violin lines was common in late Baroque orchestral music. In the 'ouverture', both the oboes start doubling the first violin part; in the counterpoint of bars 24b-42 the two oboes each take one of the two violin parts; later on, they take on the role of sustaining the harmonies in the background (bars 50-56). The divisi oboes in the fugal section of the 'French overture' form allow greater transparency and better balance between the dense contrapuntal lines. In the whole of the gigue, both oboes double the first violin part throughout, strongly emphasising its melodic drive. Many of the features of the interpretation stem from considerations of instrumentation. These divide into those who want to recreate authenticity and those who do not. But there are also subtler issues of interpretation:
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