Born: 21 March 1685 , Eisenach Died: 28 July 1750 , Leipzig The Artist: One of the greatest composers of all time. About Overture in a French Style BWV 831 Artist: Bach, Johann Sebastian. This piece is part of our collection of French pieces. Versions of this piece available for: Flute Request New Version (subscribers only) Info. J.S.Bach : Overture in a French Style BWV 831.

Sviatoslav Richter in 1991 plays Bach French Ouverture BWV 831. Composte da Giov: Sebast: BachSviatoslav Richter in 1991 plays Bach French Ouverture BWV 831. It reads Sounate â Cembalo certato è Violino Solo, col Basso per Viola da Gamba accompagnato se piace.

The first known source from 1725, in the handwriting of Bach's nephew Johann Heinrich Bach, explicitly specifies an obbligato harpsichord and, despite the fact that a later version in the hand of Bach's pupil Johann Friedrich Agricola has a marginal 'Violin I' at the start of BWV 1014, the scoring of the upper part in the keyboard, especially in the adagio movements BWV 1016/i, BWV 1017/iii and BWV 1018/iii, uses figures that are idiomatic to a keyboard instrument but unsuited to other instruments. Composition Information Description.Although it had been believed for some time—and advanced as a theory by Eppstein (1966)—that the sonatas BWV 1014–1019 must have originated in lost trio sonatas for two instruments and continuo, no prior versions have been discovered and it is accepted that only a few movements could have such an origin. Overture in the French Manner, partita for keyboard in B minor, BWV 831 (Clavier-bung II/2). This is well illustrated by the first movement of the organ sonata BWV 528 which originated as the sinfonia starting the second part of the cantata, BWV 76, with oboe d'amore and viola da gamba as solo instruments and likewise by the trio sonata for two flutes and continuo BWV 1039 and its alternative version for viola da gamba and obbligato harpsichord, BWV 1027. In each case the trio sonata texture derives from the compositional form and not the particular combination of instruments, which was partly a function of the musicians at Bach's disposal.

Later generations of Bach scholars have recognized that Bach's involvement with chamber and orchestral music continued in Leipzig, especially through the Collegium Musicum and accordingly Schmieder's rigid chronology is no longer generally accepted. Accordingly, the chamber music works by Bach were automatically assigned to the Cöthen period. In the centre is Café Zimmermann, where the Collegium Musicum held weekly chamber music concertsWhen Wolfgang Schmieder created the chronology for the BWV catalogue of Bach's works in the 1950s, the assumption was that Bach's musical output matched his responsibilities in each of the three distinct phases in his career: the period 1700–1717 when he was organist at Lüneburg, Arnstadt, Mühlhausen and Weimar the period 1717–1723 when he was Capellmeister at Cöthen and the period from 1723 onwards when he served as Thomaskantor in Leipzig. Johann Georg Schreiber, 1720: Engraving of Katherinenstrasse in Leipzig. Throughout his life Bach returned to the sonatas to refine and perfect the score, particularly in the last sonata, which survives in three different versions. Although all the sonatas are written in trio sonata form, each has its own distinct character—the third is an example of the Sonate auf Concertenart, a sonata written in the style of a concerto.

This suggests that the initial collection of sonatas, assembled for an unknown purpose, was probably copied from pre-existing compositions and hastily completed. In addition two of the three last movements in the sixth sonata copied by Bach himself were borrowed from the sixth keyboard partita BWV 830, movements also included in the 1725 Notenbüchlein for Bach's wife Anna Magdalena Bach. In the 1958 Neue Bach-Ausgabe edition, the editor and musicologist Rudolf Gerber was unaware that the 1725 manuscript had been largely copied by Bach's nephew, who was only a pupil at the Thomasschule at the time.

The originals, assumed to date from Cöthen, are lost but it is probable that these were the first two movements of a three-movement Sonate auf Concertenart. The two first movements, a large scale concerto allegro and a short largo, remained largely unaltered throughout these revisions and were copied by Bach's nephew Johann Heinrich into the earliest surviving manuscript from 1725. The three different versions of the sonata and its successive comprehensive modifications in Leipzig indicate that its role in the collection evolved only gradually. The history of the sixth sonata BWV 1019 is distinct from that of the five others.

The harpsichord solo was later published in Bach's Clavier-Übung I as the Corrente in BWV 830, the sixth of the keyboard partitas before that it had already been entered into Anna Magdalena's Notebook. Vivace, G major (repeat of opening movement)The solo movements provide a contrast with the other movements, which are duos for violin and obbligato harpsichord moreover as dance movements they add variety and lightness to the set, making it more like a dance suite. The sonata took the following form:

Musical structure The slow movements contain some of Bach's most beautiful and profound essays in serious, sad, or lamenting affects.— A History of Baroque Music, Buelow (2004, p. 523)The first musical description of the sonatas for obbligato harpsichord and violin BWV 1014–1019 appeared in Spitta (1884). Now with five movements and matching more closely the earlier five sonatas, it retained the first two movements (with some minor modifications, including 'Vivace' changed to 'Allegro') but had three newly composed movements after that: a dance-like harpsichord solo in E minor in binary form an Adagio in B minor, modulating to D major and a gigue-like final Allegro in G major. There is no longer any indication that the opening Vivace should be repeated in performance the lack of a fast finale returning to the original key has been taken as an indication of the unfinished or intermediate status of this version.The sonata attained its final form some time between 17 and survives in a copy made by Bach's pupil Johann Friedrich Agricola. He replaced the harpsichord solo by a lengthy Cantabile for violin and obbligato harpsichord:The third movement is considered to be an arrangement of an aria from a lost secular cantata, probably dating from Bach's period in Cöthen. Only the harpsichord part survives, but the violin solo for the fifth movement has been reconstructed without difficulty from the score of BWV 830 the missing violin part for the short Adagio has been recovered from the second version of the sonata.After the publication of Clavier-Übung I, probably in the late 1720s, Bach revised the sixth sonata by excising the two published movements from BWV 830.

They are all fugal in form but can be divided into two distinct and readily identifiable types: Eppstein (1969) pointed out a uniform structure in the fast movements. The movements of the three versions of BWV 1019 will be discussed separately in its own section below.The five sonatas BWV 1014–1018 are all in four movements in the conventions of the sonata da chiesa, with a slow first movement, followed by a fast movement, then another slow movement before the final allegro, often having a joyful or witty dance-like character. Because of the complex history of BWV 1019, with its five movements and two previous versions, Eppstein gives his analysis for the first five sonatas BWV 1014–1018, viewing the movements of the sixth sonata as hybrid forms. He determined common features in their compositional forms part of his aim was to investigate their possible origins as transcriptions of lost compositions for chamber ensemble.

The fugue subject is then taken up by the other upper part and finally in the bass.

Bach Bwv 831