Description
A slow French dance in 6/4, full of dotted rhythms that sway within two broad beats to the bar, this Loure follows straight after the brilliant Prelude of BWV 1006a. The suite is Bach's arrangement of his E major Partita No. 3 for solo violin, BWV 1006; no instrument is named in the autograph, though lute or lute-harpsichord is thought likely. The loure is a rare movement in Bach's suites.
In E major, it moves with a dignified ease. At 355 notes in 151 seconds it is sparse, and its range, D#2 to C#5, fits on a 61-key keyboard.
Rated intermediate. There are few notes; the task is to keep the dotted rhythms from turning too sharp at a slow tempo while maintaining the flow of the broad beats. Lower the playback speed to hear the length of the dots, repeat a phrase with the A-B loop, and check the balance of melody and bass with the hand colours. Heard straight after the Prelude, its calm comes across clearly.
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About the Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Johann Sebastian Bach was the towering figure of German Baroque music, serving for decades as Cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. Renowned for his mastery of counterpoint, he laid the foundations of keyboard music with works such as The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Inventions. This site includes minuets and polonaises from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, the Inventions and Sinfonias, and fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier. The Notebook pieces are catalogued with BWV Anh. (appendix) numbers, but many are by other composers - Petzold's minuets among them - or by no one known, and most of their song pages give the current view of who wrote them.
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