Description
The opening movement of Bach's French Suite No. 6 in E major. The first five of the six suites appear in the 1722 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, but No. 6 survives in later copies. It has the most dances of the six, including a polonaise and a minuet.
It is in E major and 4/4, about a minute and a half long with 663 notes. A stream of right-hand sixteenth notes runs without a break, supported by the left hand, which sometimes answers in imitation, in writing close to two voices. In two parts, it heads to the dominant, B major, in the first half and returns home in the second, its bright, calm sound setting up the start of the suite.
It is rated intermediate and calls for keeping the quick right-hand notes even and smooth. The task is to feel the harmonic changes within the running notes and give each phrase direction. E major has many sharps, so settling a fingering that includes the black keys early makes it steadier. The range runs from E2 to B5, so it fits on a 61-key keyboard. Slow the playback to check both lines with the hand colours, and practise in sections with the A-B loop.
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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