MuseData: Johann Sebastian Bach

Brandenburg Concertos

Bach's six Brandenburg Concertos are demonstrations par excellence of both virtuosity and interplay between most of instruments available to Bach's time in Thuringia, where Bach was raised and held all his posts prior to moving to Leipzig in 1723. He composed them while living in Cöthen, which offered few of these resources but may have prompted Bach to show how many different combinations of sounds could be found in the broader palette of sonorities in use within a day's travel from the court.

Work No.	Catalogue No.	Genre / Instruments ?	Key	Score (PDF)	Concordances
No. 1	BWV 1046	Concerto / 2 Hn, Ob, Bn; VPiccolo, 2V, Va, Vc, Vne Gr, Cem	F Major		BWV 1046/3 = BWV 207a/1. BWV 1046/7 = BWV 207a/5a.
No. 1a	BWV 1046a	Concerto / 2 Hn, 3 Ob, Bn; 2V, Va, Vc, Cem	F Major	BWV 1046a	BWV 1046a/1 = BWV 52/1
No. 2	BWV 1047	Concerto / Tr, Rec, Ob, Vn; 2V, Va, Vc, Vne, Cem	F Major	BWV 1047
No. 3	BWV 1048	Concerto / 3V, 3Va, 3Vc, Vne, Cem	G Major	BWV 1048	BWV 1048/1 = BWV 174/1
No. 4	BWV 1049	Concerto / VPr, Rec, 2Vn, Va, Vc, Vne, Cem	G Major	BWV 1049	BWV 1049 = BWV 1057
No. 5	BWV 1050	Concerto / Fl, VPr, Cem concertato; V, Va, Vc, Vne, Cem	D Major
No. 5a	BWV 1050a	Concerto / Fl, VPr, Cem concertato; V, Va, Vne	D Major	BWV 1050a
No. 6	BWV 1051	Concerto / 2Va, 2Va da gamba, Vc, Vne, Cem	B♭ Major	BWV 1051

Orchestral Suites

Bach's orchestral suites come down to our time in editions based on third-party manuscripts datable to various years between 1724 and 1739. Those who have studied them recently lean to the view that, like the Brandenburgs, they were composed during Bach's Cöthen years (1717-1723) with Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen in mind. It is not clear, however, that he intended him as a set. The attribution of a putative fifth orchestra suite, BWV 1070, is widely discredited. BWV 1071, which is effectively a suite, corresponds to BWV 1046a, the alternative version of the first Brandenburg Concerto.

Each suite has a distinctly different character and each calls for a different ensemble. The treble wind in No. 2 is variously claimed to have been an oboe or a violin, although the flute and viola parts for it are in Bach's hand on one manuscript set in Berlin. We know that Bach sometimes modified one of another aspect (e.g. key) of individual works in his instrumental collections to meld the whole into a coherent entity. This may not have been the case with the ouvertures (as the orchestral suites were originally named), but the latitude to make changes is ever-present.

Collection, Work No.	Cat. No.	Genre / Instruments	Key	Earliest copy date	Score
Orchestral Suite, No. 1	BWV 1066	Suite / 2Ob, Bn, 2V, Va, Vc, Cb, Continuo	C Major	Example	Example
Orchestral Suite, No. 2	BWV 1067	Suite / Fl, 2V, Va, Vc, Cb, Continuo	B Minor	Example	Example
Orchestral Suite, No. 3	BWV 1068	Suite / 3Tr, Timp, 2Ob, 2V, Va, Vc, Cb, Continuo	D Major	Example	Example
orchestral Suite, No. 4	BWV 1069	Suite / 3Tr, Timp, 3Pb, Bn, 2V, Va, Vc, Cb, Continuo	D Major	Example	Example

Works for Harpsichord

The Well-tempered Clavier

Bach composed two books of 24 pairs of works in each key (major and minor) of the "well-tempered" keyboard. Each pair consists of a prelude and fugue. Equal temperament, the practical virtue of which was the ability to play in any key without retuning the instrument, was emerging when Bach compiled the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Equal temperament, in which each named tone set equidistant (in cents) from adjacent keys, was not instantly adopted everywhere. Organs were generally tuned to meantone temperament. Much of the music of Asia employs just intonation, which requires an instrument to be retuned for the next piece, unless it is in the same key as the preceding one. Bach demonstrated the use of equal temperament by compiling this cycle of short pieces. The preludes could show off the effect of equal temperament in scale passages, while the fugues imitative processes required consonance in certain places to fulfill the work's satisfaction of the genre's requirements.

Book I (1722)

Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier was published towards the end of Bach's tenure at the Cöthen court.

Work No.	Catalogue No.	Genre/instrument	Key	Score
No. 1a	BWV 846a	Prelude/keyboard	C Major	BWV 846a
No. 1b	BWV 846b	Fugue/keyboard	C Major	BWV 846b
No. 2a	BWV 847a	Prelude/keyboard	C Minor	BWV 847a
No. 2b	BWV 847b	Fugue/keyboard	C Minor	BWV 847b
No. 3a	BWV 848a	Prelude/keyboard	C# Major	BWV 848a
No. 3b	BWV 848b	Fugue/keyboard	C# Major	BWV 848b
No. 4a	BWV 849a	Prelude/keyboard	C# Minor	BWV 849a
No. 4b	BWV 849b	Fugue/keyboard	C# Minor	BWV 849b
No. 5a	BWV 850a	Prelude/keyboard	D Major	BWV 850a
No. 5b	BWV 850b	Fugue/keyboard	D Minor	BWV 850b
No. 6a	Example	Prelude/keyboard	D Minor	BWV 851a
No. 6b	Example	Fugue/keyboard	D Minor	BWV 851b
No. 7a	Example	Prelude/keyboard	Eb Major	BWV 852a
No. 7b	Example	Fugue/keyboard	Eb Major	BWV 852b
No. 8a	Example	Prelude/keyboard	Eb Minor	BWV 853a
No. 8b	Example	Fugue/keyboard	D# Minor	BWV 853b
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Two-part Inventions

J. S. Bach: Invention No. 4 [BWV 775] from the holograph manuscript, Mus.ms. Bach P 610, Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek.

Bach's two-part inventions (BWV 772-786) constituted one set of several that J. S. Bach composed for his gifted son Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710-1784). The term invention is traced to the solo violin pieces Op. 10 (1713) by Francesco Antonio Bonporti (1672-1749), a Trentine composer. Bach uses the Latin title Inventio, reminding us of his command of the language, which he sometimes taught (in addition to teaching, composing, and performing music). Each three-voice work [see next section] was likewise called a Sinfonia.

Work No.	Catalogue No.	Genre / Instrument	Key	Score
No. 1	BWV 772	Invention / harpsichord	C Major	BWV 772
No. 1a	BWV 772a	Invention / harpsichord	C Major
No. 2	BWV 773	Invention / harpsichord	C Minor	BWV 773
No. 3	BWV 774	Invention / harpsichord	D Major	BWV 774
No. 4	BWV 775	Invention / harpsichord	D Minor	BWV 775
No. 5	BWV 776	Invention / harpsichord	E♭ Major	BWV 776
No. 6	BWV 777	Invention / harpsichord	E Major	BWV 777
No. 7	BWV 778	Invention / harpsichord	E Minor	BWV 778
No. 8	BWV 779	Invention / harpsichord	F Major	BWV 779
No. 9	BWV 780	Invention / harpsichord	F Minor	BWV 780
No. 10	BWV 781	Invention / harpsichord	G Major	BWV 781
No. 11	BWV 782	Invention / harpsichord	G Minor	BWV 782
No. 12	BWV 783	Invention / harpsichord	A Major	BWV 783
No. 13	BWV 784	Invention / harpsichord	A Minor	BWV 784
No. 14	BWV 785	Invention / harpsichord	Bb Major	BWV 785
No. 15	BWV 786	Invention / harpsichord	B Minor	BWV 786

The harmonic cycle that Bach has constructed in the collection as a whole foreshadows the tonally more complete cycles of the two sets of paired preludes and fugues called the Well-Tempered Clavier. They appeared in 1722 and 1744. It was not enough for young Friedemann to be able to play the pieces. He was being called to understand the cyclic possibilities that inhered in tonal relationships. This was a dominant focus in music theory of the time. Johann David Heinichen's Circle of Fifths was first formalized in 1711 and has remained the dominant scheme for rationalizing harmonic relations in Western music theory.

Three-part inventions (Sinfonie)

The three-part inventions, or sinfonie, follow the same cyclical organization in the aggregate. It has been suggested that the intended relationship between the inventions and sinfonias was to be performed in pairs, like the prelude-fugue sets of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Given their shared cycle of keys, Invention 1 might be followed by Sinfonia No. 1 and so forth.

Work No.	Catalogue No.	Genre / Instrument	Key	Score
No. 1	BWV 787	Sinfonia / harpsichord	C Major	BWV 787
No. 2	BWV 788	Sinfonia / harpsichord	C Minor	BWV 788
No. 3	BWV 789	Sinfonia / harpsichord	D Major	BWV 789
No. 4	BWV 790	Sinfonia / harpsichord	D Minor	BWV 790
No. 5	BWV 791	Sinfonia / harpsichord	E♭ Major	BWV 791
No. 6	BWV 792	Sinfonia / harpsichord	E Major	BWV 792
No. 7	BWV 793	Sinfonia / harpsichord	E Minor	BWV 793
No. 8	BWV 794	Sinfonia / harpsichord	F Major	BWV 794
No. 9	BWV 795	Sinfonia / harpsichord	F Minor
No. 10	BWV 796	Sinfonia / harpsichord	G Major
No. 11	BWV 797	Sinfonia / harpsichord	G Minor	BWV 797
No. 12	BWV 798	Sinfonia / harpsichord	A Major
No. 13	BWV 799	Sinfonia / harpsichord	A Minor
No. 14	BWV 800	Sinfonia / harpsichord	Bb Major	BWV 800
No. 15	BWV 801	Sinfonia / harpsichord	B Minor