French Suite No. 1 in D minor, BWV 812
Johann Sebastian Bach
Glenn Gould, piano
00:20 1. Allemande
01:51 2. Courante
02:52 3. Sarabande
05:40 4. Menuet I
06:54 5. Menuet II
09:22 6. Gigue
The French Suites, BWV 812-817, are six suites which Johann Sebastian Bach wrote for the clavier (harpsichord or clavichord) between the years of 1722 and 1725. Although Suites Nos. 1 to 4 are typically dated to 1722, it is possible that the first was written somewhat earlier.
The suites were later given the name ‘French’ (first recorded usage by Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg in 1762). Likewise, the English Suites received a later appellation. The name was popularised by Bach's biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel, who wrote in his 1802 biography of Bach, “One usually calls them French Suites because they are written in the French manner.” This claim, however, is inaccurate: like Bach's other suites, they follow a largely Italian convention. There is no surviving definitive manuscript of these suites, and ornamentation varies both in type and in degree across manuscripts. The courantes of the first (in D minor) and third (in B minor) suites are in the French style; the courantes of the other four suites are all in the Italian style. In any case, Bach also employed dance movements (such as the polonaise of the sixth suite) that are foreign to the French manner. Usually, the swift second movement after the allemande is named either courante (French style) or corrente (Italian style), but in all these suites the second movements are named courante, according to the Bach catalog listing, which supports the suggestion that these suites are “French”. Some of the manuscripts that have come down to us are titled “Suites Pour Le Clavecin”, which is what probably led to the tradition of calling them “French” Suites.
Two additional suites, one in A minor (BWV 818), the other in E♭ major (BWV 819), are linked to the familiar six in some manuscripts. The Overture in the French style, BWV 831, which Bach published as the second part of Clavier-Übung, is a suite in the French style but not connected to the French suites. Some manuscripts have movements not found in other copies. These movements are probably spurious.
Johann Sebastian Bach’s obituary, written by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johann Friedrich Agricola, includes a listing of the composer’s published and unpublished works. Down in middle of the unpublished items we find these keyboard works mentioned: Six toccatas for the clavier; Six suites for the same; Six more of the same, somewhat shorter;…
Fifty years later, the first biography of Bach was written by Johann Nikolaus Forkel and issued in 1802. In that slim volume, listed among Bach’s keyboard works even then unpublished, we find the following description of those “somewhat shorter” suites:
Six little Suites, consisting of Allemandes, courants, &c. They are generally called French Suites 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.
Forkel also refers to six “great” suites, which he calls the English Suites.
Confoundingly, we have no way of knowing where these two appellations, “French” and “English”, came from. We know only that they had been attached to these suites by someone other than Bach and that the names had come into use in the intervening years. Forkel took a stab and suggested that they were in the “French taste” but there is little stylistic evidence in them to merit that label beyond the presence of the names of certain movements. Still, dodgy nomenclature has been unable to diminish the popularity of the French Suites and even for Forkel these were “the most outstanding clavier works of Johann Sebastian Bach….”
Grant Hiroshima, former Director of Information Technology for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, is a frequent contributor to the Philharmonic program book.
#glenngould, #Bach