Partita No.3: Allemande

Description

Ornamental thirty-second notes fill every beat of this A minor allemande, the second movement of Partita No. 3, given here in the Bach-Gesellschaft edition (volume 43) that Mutopia transcribed. The allemande began as a German dance, but in Bach's suites it left dancing behind and became the place where the finest note values are packed into each beat of a broad common time.

It opens with a crotchet upbeat, and the right hand moves on in runs of thirty-second notes woven together with dotted rhythms. Other lines move above notes held by ties, so that two or even three strands often lie within a single hand. The left hand walks mostly in quavers, now and then answering the right with the same thirty-second-note flourishes. Each half is repeated.

An advanced movement whose difficulty is not speed but fitting the crowded small notes exactly into each beat. Check in the score view which beat every run and dotted figure belongs to before playing, and the flow holds together. Lower the playback speed, repeat a single beat's run with the A-B loop, and listen for whether the notes meant to be held by ties are lasting their full length.

Suite-form works from the Baroque era; Bach's Partitas, a sequence of varied dances, are ranked among the greatest keyboard works.