Description
Bach's French Suites are a set of six keyboard suites; the first five appear in the 1722 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach. The name French is not Bach's own but a later label that stuck. No. 3 in B minor has an allemande, courante and sarabande, then a minuet with trio and an anglaise among its dances, ending with a gigue.
It is in B minor and 4/4. The data here, about a minute and fourteen seconds and 511 notes, is the size of a single movement in 4/4 (most likely the allemande), not of the whole suite. The allemande is a moderately paced dance in four, with quick notes flowing without a break as the voices in both hands interweave. The calm darkness of B minor sets the mood at the start of the suite.
It is rated intermediate and calls for keeping the voices in both hands flowing evenly. The task is to hear the changing harmony through the running figures and keep a sense of where each phrase is going. The range runs from C-sharp 2 to B5, so it fits on a 61-key keyboard. Slow the playback to check both lines with the hand colours, practise in sections with the A-B loop, and then compare its tempo and character with the other dances of the suite.
Six keyboard suites by Bach that elegantly incorporate Baroque dance forms.
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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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