March 19, 2012. Johann Sebastian Bach. The great German composer was born on March 21, 1685. Bach’s musical output was enormous, but for him composing was work: practically all his life Bach wrote music to order. While at Köthen, where Bach was hired as Kapellmeister, he composed for the orchestra at the court of Prince Leopold. And when later on he was appointed the Cantor (music director) of the Thomasschule, part of his job was to compose music for Sunday services at major churches of Leipzig, Thomaskirche and Nikolaikirche. All the while his main task was to instruct student in singing. So it comes as no surprise that Bach recycled a lot of material from one composition to another (to reuse your own or even someone else compositions was quite acceptable in the 18th century: Italian composers did it quite often, and Bach himself transcribed Alessandro Marcello’s oboe concerto to harpsichord and used a number of pieces from Vivaldi’s L'estro Armonico). What is really interesting is how organically Bach’s music could be rearranged from one instrument (or set of instruments) to another. A great example of such transformation is his harpsichord concertos. These concertos were written while Bach was director of the Collegium musicum in Leipzig in 1730s, but scholars believe that most of these concertos are Bach’s own arrangements of violin concertos written inKöthen some years earlier. The famous Concerto no. 1 (who hasn’t heard Glenn Gould’s stupendous recordings of this piece on a contemporary Steinway piano?) was most likely based on a now lost D minor violin concerto. The harpsichord concerto in turn was later arranged by Bach as an organ concerto and was used in two of his Cantatas, the first movement of Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal (We must pass through great sadness), BWV 146, and the last movement (Sinfonia) of cantata Ich habe meine Zuversicht, (I have my confidence),BWV 188. Here’s the first movement, Allegro, of the Wir müssen cantata performed by Gächinger Kantorei and Bach-Collegium of Stuttgart, Helmuth Rilling, Director (courtesy of Youtube).
Bach was not the only one to transcribe his music. In the 19th and 20th centuries his music was arranged numerous times, starting with the famous performance of Saint Matthew Passion by Mendelssohn in 1842, the first one in almost 90 years: it was abbreviated and re-orchestrated for a much larger orchestra and chorus. Ferruccio Busoni made a large number of piano transcriptions of Bach’s works, including such repertoire staples as Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, originally a work for organ, and Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 in D minor for solo violin, BWV 1004. We’ll hear Chaconne in performance by Russian-German pianist Elena Melnikova (here). Camille Saint-Saëns wrote a wonderful if quite Romantic piano transcription of Overture from Cantata Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir (Unto Thee, O God, do we give thanks), BWV 29. It’s performed by the pianist Nadejda Vlaeva (here). The recording is from her new Hyperion CD of Bach transcriptions.
Johann Sebastian Bach 2012
March 19, 2012. Johann Sebastian Bach. The great German composer was born on March 21, 1685. Bach’s musical output was enormous, but for him composing was work: practically all his life Bach wrote music to order. While at Köthen, where Bach was
hired as Kapellmeister, he composed for the orchestra at the court of Prince Leopold. And when later on he was appointed the Cantor (music director) of the Thomasschule, part of his job was to compose music for Sunday services at major churches of Leipzig, Thomaskirche and Nikolaikirche. All the while his main task was to instruct student in singing. So it comes as no surprise that Bach recycled a lot of material from one composition to another (to reuse your own or even someone else compositions was quite acceptable in the 18th century: Italian composers did it quite often, and Bach himself transcribed Alessandro Marcello’s oboe concerto to harpsichord and used a number of pieces from Vivaldi’s L'estro Armonico). What is really interesting is how organically Bach’s music could be rearranged from one instrument (or set of instruments) to another. A great example of such transformation is his harpsichord concertos. These concertos were written while Bach was director of the Collegium musicum in Leipzig in 1730s, but scholars believe that most of these concertos are Bach’s own arrangements of violin concertos written inKöthen some years earlier. The famous Concerto no. 1 (who hasn’t heard Glenn Gould’s stupendous recordings of this piece on a contemporary Steinway piano?) was most likely based on a now lost D minor violin concerto. The harpsichord concerto in turn was later arranged by Bach as an organ concerto and was used in two of his Cantatas, the first movement of Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal (We must pass through great sadness), BWV 146, and the last movement (Sinfonia) of cantata Ich habe meine Zuversicht, (I have my confidence), BWV 188. Here’s the first movement, Allegro, of the Wir müssen cantata performed by Gächinger Kantorei and Bach-Collegium of Stuttgart, Helmuth Rilling, Director (courtesy of Youtube).
Bach was not the only one to transcribe his music. In the 19th and 20th centuries his music was arranged numerous times, starting with the famous performance of Saint Matthew Passion by Mendelssohn in 1842, the first one in almost 90 years: it was abbreviated and re-orchestrated for a much larger orchestra and chorus. Ferruccio Busoni made a large number of piano transcriptions of Bach’s works, including such repertoire staples as Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, originally a work for organ, and Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 in D minor for solo violin, BWV 1004. We’ll hear Chaconne in performance by Russian-German pianist Elena Melnikova (here). Camille Saint-Saëns wrote a wonderful if quite Romantic piano transcription of Overture from Cantata Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir (Unto Thee, O God, do we give thanks), BWV 29. It’s performed by the pianist Nadejda Vlaeva (here). The recording is from her new Hyperion CD of Bach transcriptions.