Orchestral Suites BWV 1066-1069
General Discussions - Part 3

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Orchestral Suites, Overtures, Dance Music

William L. Hoffman wrote (January 7, 2020):
While Bach composed only four extant Orchestral Suites, BWV 1066-69, which he performed in Leipzig (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestral_suites_(Bach), he also composed other dance-oriented suites for solo instruments as well as settings found in various cantatas and elsewhere (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suite_(Bach). The typical French suite had the following character dance movements, called galanteries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galanterie): Prelude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Bourrée, and Gigue. The four suites "exist as a pinnacle of Bach's achievement and are some of his most often performed works, as they do not throw up the same problems of instrumentation as the Brandenburgs, and can be (though these days very rarely are) performed by conventional orchestras," says Nicholas Kenyon.¹ Bach also preserved orchestral settings of Bach Family members, Johann Bernard Bach and Johann Ludwig Bach. A fifth Bach orchestral suite in G minor, catalogued as BWV 1070, in style galant is probably spurious, possibly by son Friedemann.²

Bach's colleagues amassed large collections of orchestral suites for court and municipal events, led by the prolific Georg Philipp Telemann (1767-1767) who was steeped in multi-national traditions, notably French dance music and Italian Opera. Telemann came to Leipzig in 1701 to study at the university and founded the student collegium musicum, became music director of the opera and organist at the Neukirche. He then served at the courts of Sorau and Eisenach and went Frankfurt in 1712. He popularized the French overture originally as court music but developed it as programme music. His 135 surviving examples of orchestral suites are a fraction of those known to have been composed, says Robin Stowell.³ Meanwhile, Christoph Graupner (1683-1760) at the Saxe-Gotha court composed 85, and Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758) at Darmstadt, almost 100. In his orchestral suites, Telemann showed "his unrivaled influence," says Siegbert Rampe,⁴ on other composers as well, including Johann Bernard Bach (1676-1749), Sebastian Bach, Johann Melchior Molter (1696-1755), and Jan Dismas Zalenka (1679-1745). Meanwhile, Bach more than all his colleagues pervasively and systematically utilized French dance in such a variety of music, dances titled and untitled, in his keyboard, instrumental, orchestral, and sacred and secular vocal works.⁵

Handel selectively composed dance suites, beginning with varied German keyboard suites in Hamburg and Hanover. The first set of eight suites, Suites de pièces, HWV 426-433, was published in 1720 (https://www.amazon.com/Suites-Pieces-Pour-Clavecin-1720/dp/B00009LW58) and includes the "Harmonious Blacksmith," the concluding Air with Variations (No. 4) in the Suite No. 5 in E Major, HWV 430 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjeFYoXf_WY). The second collection of nine, HWV 434-442, was published in 1733 and also dates to 1703 (https://imslp.org/wiki/Suites_de_Pièces%2C_HWV_434-442_(Handel%2C_George_Frideric). A third undated grouping includes two simpler suites, BWV 447 and 452, in the basic four movements of Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue. In the first eight suites, which Handel revised, there is a mix of suites as most begin with preludes or fugues and include a sonata da chiesa (No. 2) and mixed suite-sonatas (Nos. 3 and 7), as well as a concluding Passacaille in No. 7. Both of Handel's mixed orchestral suites were composed for royalty in the open air (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mF8jgEbKxhIYL4qAbJoBkLLvwMkFI4wH0). The three Water Music Suites in F, D, and G dating to 1717 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Music). Their dances include minuets, bourrées, hornpipes, lentement, sarabande, rigaudon and gigue. The Music for the Royal Fireworks single suite with massive winds and brass dates to 1749 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_for_the_Royal_Fireworks). The dances are Bourrée, La Paix (Largo alla siciliana), La Réjouissance, and Menuets. The suite-like extended orchestral overtures, "later attached to [the operas] Il pastor fido, Teseo, Silia, and Ottone, may date to Handel's residence in Hanover," says Winton Dean.⁶

Orchestra Suite Genesis

While Bach began composing orchestral suites as early as when he was Konzertmeister in Weimar (1714-17), these four suites took their final form in Leipzig in the second half of the 1720s. Bach had begun composing keyboard dance suites in the early1700s, under the influence of Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-67, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Jakob_Froberger), as well as Jean Baptiste Lully's ensemble suites from operas and ballets. Bach probably studied the ouvertures of Marais, Staffani and the Germans J. S. Kusser, Georg Muffat, and J. C. F. Fischer, observes Richard D. P. Jones.⁷ "By the second decade of the eighteenth century," says Jones, Bach and Telemann "were already writing in the so-called 'mixed style', a subtle blend of native German characterization with elements imported from France and Italy (and sometimes from Poland and England too)." The most noticeable German element was "the ineradicable polyphonic thinking that informed the textures," says Jones, the French being the dotted rhythm of the overture introductions, and the Italian concerto-ritornello structure.

Bach began composing dance suite collections in Cöthen, usually preserving the standard galanteries. Here is a rough outline of Bach's early, antecedent keyboard dance works and their mature successors in collections (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/Keyboard-Music-Early.htm): 1. Early French suites (partitas, overtures), BWV 820, 822, 833, 832, 821, 823, and 996 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/BWV818-824.htm; later the Six English Suites, BWV 806-811 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/BWV806-811.htm); Six French Suites, BWV 812-817 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/BWV812-817.htm); Six Partitas, BWV 825-830 (Clavierübung I, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/BWV825-830.htm), and French Overture (Partita), BWV 831 (Clavierübung II, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/BWV831.htm).

The actual dating and venue of the four orchestral suites is still debated among Bach scholars, as well as the original solo instrument of the second suite and the origins of individual movements such as French Overtures to Leipzig Cantatas BWV 97a and 119a and an instrumental dance suite adapted in Cantata 194 in Leipzig (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV194-D4.htm). The original version, BWV 194a (BC G-11, https://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV194a.htm), with parts for 3 oboes and strings, is presumed to have been a Cöthen congratulatory serenade with five dance movements: (1) French Overture, (3) 12/8 Pastorale, (5) 2/2 Gavotte, (8) 4/4 gigue, (10) 3/4 menuetaccompanying vocal texts. These dances are found in a reconstruction of Alfred Dürr in the Neue Bach Ausgabe I/35 Critical Commentary 1964, https://www.baerenreiter.com/en/shop/product/details/BA5023_01/.⁸ The French Overtures, BWV 97a and 119a, were subsequently arranged as opening cantata choruses with trumpets and drums and text overlay in the fugal B sections (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qog4b2OV9ns, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJAOE3d_YpI), as is Cantata 110 (1725) and possibly Cantata 197a (1728-29). Bach's first French Overture setting is the opening chorale fantasia chorus to Advent Cantata 61, composed in Weimar in 1714 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mREUBjHoE0w&vl=en).

Four Orchestral Suites

The oldest source of the third suite, BWV 1068, is a partial autograph parts set about 1730 (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalSource_source_00002507), copied at the same time as the Ouvertüren for smaller ensembles by Johann Bernard Bach and possibly also performed by the Leipzig Collegium musicum.⁹ The fourth suite, BWV 1069, parts set also is dated to c.1730 (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalSource_source_00002639 ). The earliest surviving music for the first suite, BWV 1066, is a set of parts from Leipzig, 1724-25, copied by main Bach copyist C. G. Meissner in 1724-25 (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalSource_source_00002506) while the second suite, BWV 1067, source is a partial autograph parts set dated to 1738-39 (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalSource_source_00002509).

"Bach's marriage of the popular Italian concerto style with that of the French suite, especially in the overture, considerably enriched the genre" of the orchestral suite, says Stowell (Ibid.). "Bach's attempts to invest each work with an individual profile are clear from the fact that each is scored for different forces, which has important implications for each structure and character," says Werner Breig.¹⁰ The four-part string writing is bolstered by the "winds, the nature, number and function of which vary from work to work," he says. The first and fourth suites may have been composed originally in Cöthen, since their music was first found in Leipzig in 1724-5 while Bach otherwise was engaged in composing church music.

The Orchestral Suite No 1 in C Major, BWV 1066 stylistically seems the earliest composed, says Jones (Ibid.: 85), with conventional thematic invention and imitation of French style instead of originality but with imaginative scoring in woodwind episodes of the Lully use of two oboes and bassoon. The Orchestral Suite No. 4 in D major, BWV 1969, "gives the impression that it represents a more sophisticated contribution to the genre," says Jones (Ibid.). The French woodwind trio becomes an instrumental choir in exchanges wth the four-part strings in "highly imaginative effects of scoring," he says. The Suite No. 2 in B minor, BWV 1067, and the Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068, "both belong to a late, hybrid version of the genre, the concert en ouverture, cultivate in the late 1720s and 1730s," says Jones (Ibid.: 248). Bach scholars dispute the origins of the Suite No. 2, suggesting that the original version in A minor c.1730 was scored variously for solo flute, violin, or oboe with strings or solo oboe or strings alone. ¹¹

The four suites in their final forms do not follow the usual dance suite galanteries but have a potpourri of different genres and character pieces in each, having only in common the lengthy two-part French Overture and Bourrée. Here are the suites with their individual dances: No. 1, Courante, Forlane, Menuet, Passepied; No. 2, Rondeau, Sarabande, Polonaise, Badinerie; No. 3, Air, Gavotte, Gigue; No. 4, Gavotte, Menuet, Rejouissance. Obviously, Bach sought to please his audience with varied yet popular styles giving a different character to each of the four suites with their varied scorings beyond the common four-part string section (music, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNh3ppZVrSI).

Etcetera

By 1729, as Bach assumed leadership of the Leipzig Collegium musicum, he took his orchestral suites, with added three trumpets and timpani to key movements of Suites 3, and 4, presenting the French Overtures possibly as intermezzi or entradas to secular vocal works at Zimmermann's Coffeehouse and Gardens. The brass additions may have come beginning with the setting of the French Overture (prelude and fugue), BWV 1069 as the opening chorus of Cantata 110, "Unser Mund sei voll Lächens" (Our mouths are full of laughter) for Christmas Day 1725 (BCW Cantata 110 ). A similar setting of the overture to the Third Suite may have been adapted as the opening chorus of Cantata 197a, "Ehre sei Gott in Der Höhe" (Glory to God in the Highest), for Christmas Day 1728 or 1729, but it has not been accepted or recorded (See BCW Cantata 197a, https://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV197-D3.htm: "William L. Hoffman wrote (March 4, 2009): BWV 197a Realized!)."

The Johann Ludwig Bach (1677-1731, https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Bach-Johann-Ludwig.htm) orchestral Suite, the Overture in G major, JLB 20, dates to 1715.¹² There also is his Suite on C Major (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qop9CEFJiis).

FOOTNOTES

¹ Nicholas Keyon, ""Orchestral Suites," in Bach the Music, Bach 333, the J. S. Bach New Complete Edition (Berlin: Deutsche Grammophon, 2018: 151), https://www.bach333.com/en/
² Suite No. 5 in G minor, BWV 1070, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestral_Suite_in_G_minor,_BWV_1070, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LGPklehx84); music, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LGPklehx84); parts set https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalSource_source_00002517; see Teri Noel Towe, liner notes to "Bach: The Five Suites for Orchestra," https://www.amazon.com/Five-Suites-Orchestra-Francois-Pailard/dp/B01LY02RY2).
³ Robin Stowell, "Orchestral suites," in Oxford Composer Companions: J. S. Bach, ed. Malcolm Boyd (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999: 119f); https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199757824/obo-9780199757824-0043.xml, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Books/Book-Boyd-Oxford.htm.
⁴ See Siegbert Rampe, "J. S. Bach, the Early Overtures," liner notes 2001, https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Performers/Rampe.htm: 7; includes Rampe reconstructions of early versions of BWV 97a, 119a, and 1067-9, and References (bibliography), music, https://www.discogs.com/Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Nova-Stravaganza-Siegbert-Rampe-The-Early-Overtures-BWV-97a-119a-1066-1067a-10/release/12273556.
⁵ See Meredith Little and Natalie Jenne, Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach, expanded ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009); Part 1 examines dance practices in the area where Bach lived and work, Part 2 studies the some 12 dance genres that Bach used as well as other composers, the added Chapter 14 discusses "Dance Rhythms in Bach's Larger Works"; with Appendix A Titled Dances by J. S. Bach, and Appendix B, Untitled Dance Music by J. S. Bach (http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=21181).
⁶ Winton Dean, Chapter 12, "Music for orchestra," in The New Grove Handel (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980: 93); review, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/winton-with-anthony-hicks-dean/the-new-grove-handel/; music, https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/handel-overtures-0.
⁷ Richard D. P. Jones, "Concertos and Overtures," in The Creative Development of Johann Sebastian Bach, Vol. 1, 1695-1717: Music to Delight the Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004: 84ff).
⁸ BWV 194a, https://www.bach-digital.de/servlets/solr/select?q=%2BobjectType%3A%22work%22+%2Bcategory%3A%22BachDigital_class_00000006%5C%3A0001%22+%2Bcategory%3A%22BachDigital_class_00000005%5C%3A0001%22+%2Bmusicrepo_work01%3A%22BWV+194a%22&fl=id%2CreturnId%2CobjectType&sort=musicrepo_worksort01+asc&version=4.5&mask=search_form_work.xed&start=0&fl=id&rows=1&XSL.Style=browse&origrows=25; parts, https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalSource_source_00002543; BWV 194 music, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wREcNRuGkyc.
⁹ Johann Bernard Bach (1676-1749, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Bach-Johann-Bernhard.htm); music, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtk2_LzrDWE); David Schuenberg article, "An Enigmatic Legacy: Two Instrumental Works Attributed to Wilhelm Friedemann Bach," https://www.jstor.org/stable/41640603?seq=1.
¹⁰ Werner Breig, "The instrumental music," Eng. trans. Stewart Spencer, in The Cambridge Companion to Bach, ed. John Butt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997: 134).
¹¹ See BWV 1067 "Earlier version in A minor," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestral_suites_(Bach): flute, Joshua Rifkin; violin, Steven Zohn; oboe, Gonzalo X. Ruiz; strings, Werner Breig (cited in Jones (Ibid.: 249, Footnote 8). Three extensive articles on Bach's orchestral suites are found at Bach Perspectives 6: J. S. Bach’s Concerted Ensemble Music, The Ouverture, Gregory G. Butler, ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007); https://www.americanbachsociety.org/perspectives.html: Joshua Rifkin: The “B-Minor Flute Suite” Deconstructed: New Light on Bach’s Ouverture BWV 1067; Jeanne Swack: A Comparison of Bach’s and Telemann’s Use of the Ouverture as Theological Signifier; and Steven Zohn: Bach and the Concert en ouverture.
¹² Overture in G major, (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00010960, https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalSource_source_00023747). http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=2293133 https://www.carus-verlag.com/en/focus/instrumental-music/orchestral-music/johann-ludwig-bach-suite-in-g.html?&force_sid=7f8d9972d5e279489e417b073d3a070c; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFWJWjtxQlw.

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To Come: A year of Bach thematic and repertory studies, based on new books, beginning with Robert L. Marshall's Bach and Mozart: Essays on the Enigma of Genius (https://books.google.com/books/about/Bach_and_Mozart.html?id=8mKtDwAAQBAJ).

Kim Patrick Clow wrote (January 9, 2020):
"Meanwhile, Christoph Graupner (1683-1760) at the Saxe-Gotha court composed 85"
Just a minor point: Christoph Graupner was based in the Darmstadt court, not Saxe Gotha. That composer was Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (13 January 1690 in Grünstädtel – 27 November 1749 in Gotha) . Graupner also composed the unique orchestral suite form, called the "Entrata per la Musica di Tavola," four of these survive with both orchestral parts and the very beautiful scores. The variety of Graupner, Telemann and Fasch in regards to their orchestral suites, in both scoring and variety, is quite remarkable.

William L. Hoffman wrote (January 11, 2020):
Bach Suites Addendum

Some interesting facets of the discussion of Bach's suites in French dance styles involve a new release of keyboard music on Naxos and Handel's use of dance music. "Magna Sequentia I=III," Naxos 574026-28, is "A Grand Suite of Dances Compiled and Performed by Sonia Rubinsky, piano," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4j5429lnR4&list=RDxF40wXDBwHQ&index=2.

Rubinsky has arranged a compilation of Bach's best known dance music suites as well as lesser-known keyboard music and chorales and toccatas. The late Christopher Hogwood (1941-2014) has compiled a Cambridge Music Handbooks of Handel's orchestral works with dance music (https://books.google.com/books?id=oTL2_5wvh6wC&printsec=frontcover&dq=editions:4NbzXS-VZ74C&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi5k4Tg9vnmAhWHGs0KHYAAB8YQuwUwAHoECAAQBg#v=onepage&q&f=false). The book includes an appendix of "sources of shared material" from Handel and other composers, showing that he was an inveterate self-borrower throughout his career. Hogwood's companion recording (https://www.amazon.com/Handel-Water-Fireworks-Alchymist-Concerti/dp/B0000042HN), liner notes of Anthony Hicks, shows that Handel's first orchestral music heard in England in 1710 as incidental music between acts to Ben Johnson's The Alchymist is based on the overture to the opera Rodrigo 1707 Florence, and 1709 London: Overture, Prelude-Minuet, Sarabande-Boree-Air-Boree, Minuet-Aire-Jigg.