Description
Bach's French Suite No. 5 in G major is one of the best loved of the six, and it too appears in the 1722 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach. It has seven movements, allemande, courante, sarabande, gavotte, bourrée, loure and gigue, and this allemande opens the suite.
It is in G major and 4/4, about a minute and forty seconds long with 560 notes. The allemande is a moderately paced dance in four; a flowing right-hand melody in sixteenth notes is supported by a calmer left hand. It falls into two halves, the first heading to the dominant, D major, and the second returning to G major, the typical shape of a Baroque dance.
It is rated intermediate and calls for keeping a long melodic line smooth. The task is to keep the sixteenth notes even while sensing the direction of each phrase as the harmony changes. Its compass of D2 to C6 sits within a 61-key keyboard. Slow the playback to check melody and accompaniment with the hand colours, and practise in sections with the A-B loop to build the calm flow that suits the opening 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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