3rd Brandenburg concert

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Johann Sebastian Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto , BWV 1048 , is a composition for nine string instruments and basso continuo. Bach put the work together with others in a collection of six concerts , which he sent in March 1721 under the title Six Concerts avec plusieurs instruments in score to the Margrave Christian Ludwig von Brandenburg-Schwedt . As the title suggests, the individual works differ greatly in terms of cast, scope and character.

occupation

The work is only written for strings, with the violins, violas and cellos divided into three groups or individual instruments:

history

Emergence

As in most of his concerts, Bach's composition score has not been preserved. After giving away the dedication score copied from it in 1721, in 1729 he reverted to his personal copy to write a second version as the introductory sinfonia to his cantata BWV 174 I love the highest with all my heart .

The comparison of the two received versions shows again and again differences in detail. When copying it into the dedication score, Bach used the opportunity to further individualize the cellos in the first movement. Since the symphony version was partly written by a copyist, it apparently follows closely the composition score.

Dating

In the passages written by the copyist there are passages with an ancient spelling of the accidentals that Bach gave up in 1715. This suggests that the composition was written before this date. Research also relates the concerto to the concerto for three violins BWV 1064 , which is viewed as a kind of preliminary study, as many of the composition details and the large form show striking similarities.

Precise style comparisons with the datable cantatas from the Weimar period suggest that it was composed in 1714, with a tendency towards the second half of the year, i.e. the second place in the cycle.

Sinfonia for cantata 174

Bach used many of his Weimar concert movements in the early years in Leipzig as introductions to his church cantatas. Another example is the cantata BWV 174 I love the highest with all my heart , composed in Leipzig in 1729. Bach had a scribe copy the first movement of the concerto and added parts for two horns and a ripieno chorus of two oboes and one oboe da caccia , which are performed together with the strings. These additional instruments double the nine main voices in sections and thus clarify the division into solo and tutti passages. In some places, however, new melodic material appears.

Instrumentation of the three cellos

Parallel to the well-known version, another copy of the concerto has survived in which the cello parts were not individualized to the same extent in all places - some of these passages may only have been created when the dedication autograph was written out. Since the cellos are also brought together in the last movement, an early version with only one or two cellos has been assumed. The background here is the observation in practice that the three cellos - at least for today's ears - somewhat dominate the sound. On the other hand, the whole structure of the composition with three times three strings makes such a development appear unlikely - today it is more assumed that Bach originally had no violone .

Since in the Baroque period there were also string instruments played on the arm in cello tuning, which were often not correctly referred to as “ viola da spalla ” but rather as “cello”, the question arises whether Bach could not have originally thought of such instruments.

music

sentences

  • ¢ G major
  • Adagio c E minor
  • Allegro assai 12/8 in G major

First sentence

The first movement draws its tension primarily from the juxtaposition of the three-part violins against the three-part violas. The cellos are only divided later and only in places. From around the middle, instruments also introduce themselves as soloists; this applies above all to the first and second violins and the first viola.

Reconciliation

In the tradition of Giuseppe Torelli and Tomaso Albinoni , the concerto has no executed slow movement, but only two sustained transition chords of a Phrygian cadenza ; the clear spelling of the autograph does not suggest that Bach forgot something while copying it. It is usually assumed that a small improvised solo, for example by the harpsichord or first violin, led to the chords or connected them ( Ulrich Siegele considers the length of this improvisation with three bars to be correct for reasons of proportion). However, since Bach wrote out such solos at the end of the middle movements of the first and fourth concert and there is no contemporary description of such an improvising practice, many interpreters have since dispensed with them.

Because of the dominant final chord, the next movement should follow immediately:

Final sentence

This sentence represents a strongly stylized jig ; he again divides the violins and violas into up to six parts, but leaves the cello section undivided. Typically for a dance, the sentence consists of two parts that are repeated in themselves. The whole set is practically criss-crossed with endless sixteenth-note chains.

Like most of Bach's gigues, the first part begins with instrument groups that begin imitatively and modulate to the dominant. The theme is an up and down scale run; the second half of the section then introduces a - hardly contradicting - figure made up of broken chords. As is also often the case in Bach's gigues, after the repetition the theme begins reversed in the lower register (in the cellos); the violas pick it up, and a short solo on the first violin immediately leads to a full resumption of the first part, this time in the parallel minor key, now modulating to the minor parallel of the dominant. A variant of the scale motif and the thunderous chord breaking contrast the violas and violins dramatically, then the same short solo - this time played by the first viola - leads into the recapitulation of the first part with violins and violas exchanged; here it starts on the subdominant and modulates back into the tonic.

Web links

grades

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michael Marissen: Penzel's Manuscripts of Bach Concertos . In: Martin Geck (Ed.): Bach's orchestral works. Report on the 1st Dortmund Bach Symposium 1996. Witten 1997, ISBN 3-932676-04-1 .
  2. ^ Gregory Butler: Toward a More Precise Chronology for Bach's Concerto for Three Violins and Strings BWV 1064a: The Case for Formal Analysis . In: Martin Geck (ed.): Bach's orchestral works , report on the 1st Dortmund Bach Symposium 1996. Witten 1997, ISBN 3-932676-04-1 .
  3. ^ Siegbert Rampe, Dominik Sackmann: Bach's orchestral music . Kassel 2000, ISBN 3-7618-1345-7 , p. 206.
  4. ↑ Dominik Sackmann: Triumph of Spirit over Matter - Conjectures about Johann Sebastian Bach's "Be Solo a Violino senza Basso accompagnato ..." . Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-89948-109-9 , p. 77.
  5. ^ Ulrich Siegele: Proportioning as a compositional working instrument in JS Bach's concerts . In: Martin Geck (Ed.): Bach's orchestral works. Report on the 1st Dortmund Bach Symposium 1996. Witten 1997, ISBN 3-932676-04-1 .
  6. ^ Siegbert Rampe, Dominik Sackmann: Bach's orchestral music . Kassel 2000, ISBN 3-7618-1345-7 , p. 233.