Description
Bach's English Suites are a set of six keyboard suites thought to date from his Weimar years, around the 1710s. The name English is not Bach's own, and its origin is unclear. Each suite opens with a prelude followed by dances such as the allemande, courante and sarabande, and in No. 1 a pair of bourrées comes before the gigue. This is the first of them.
It is in A major and 2/2, about a minute and six seconds long with 574 notes. The bourrée is a quick two-beat dance of French origin, marked by a springing rhythm that begins in the second half of the bar. Two voices move brightly and busily, with a stream of quick notes that never stops. It is paired with the A minor Bourrée II that follows, and is customarily played again after it.
It is rated intermediate, packing busy motion into a short span. The task is to keep the two broad beats of 2/2 and make each downbeat clear within the quick figures. The lowest note goes down to A1, below the range of a 61-key keyboard as written, but an octave shift fits every note on one. Slow the playback to check both lines with the hand colours, and break the fast passages into sections with the A-B loop to finish it while keeping the dance light.
Six suites by Bach known as the "English Suites," combining French elegance with technical brilliance.
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Sheet music provided by Mutopia Project
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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