Description
The six partitas were published one at a time from 1726 and collected in 1731 as Part I of the Clavier-Übung, the first keyboard collection Bach published himself. This gigue is the finale of No. 5 in G major, closing the chain of dances that began with the Praeambulum.
In G major and 6/8, it is written in a fugal manner: the subject begins in a single voice and the others join in imitation, while the leaping rhythm runs unbroken to the end. It packs 1,170 notes into 195 seconds, about six per second. The range is wide, from a low G1 to D6, and the lowest note falls below the left end of a 61-key keyboard.
Rated advanced. The task is to keep the imitated subject audible, whichever voice carries it, at a fast tempo. Follow the subject as it passes between hands with the hand colours, isolate the entries with the A-B loop, and check them at a reduced playback speed before raising the tempo step by step; the overall flow becomes much easier to grasp that way. As the last movement of the suite, its drive as a finale is clearest when heard straight after the movements before it.
Suite-form works from the Baroque era; Bach's Partitas, a sequence of varied dances, are ranked among the greatest keyboard works.
Browse all songs in Partitas →Sheet Music
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.
View all works by Bach →