Description
After the allemande and courante, French Suite No. 5 in G major slows down for its third movement, the sarabande. The sarabande is a triple-meter dance thought to have come from Spain, and in the Baroque suite it was customarily the slow, solemn centrepiece. Lighter dances such as the gavotte and bourrée follow it here.
It is in G major and 3/4, about a minute and a half long with 412 notes. Over the sarabande's rhythm with its weight on the second beat, the right-hand melody sings slowly with ornaments while the left-hand voices support it. Where the preceding courante crams many notes into a short time, this is music that lets each sound and each change of harmony be heard.
It is rated intermediate and calls for the control of tone and time that slow pieces demand. The task is to feel the weight of the second beat without letting the tempo sway too much, and to fold the ornaments naturally into the melody. With a range of D2 to C6, it can be played on a 61-key keyboard. Slow the playback and listen closely to the changing harmony, and check how the melody relates to the inner voices with the hand colours to balance the sound.
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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