Study nOTES - Bach Double Violin Concerto (bwv 1043)
The D-minor Concerto for Two Violins comes down to us not in full score, but rather in a set of manuscript parts that were written out jointly by Bach, his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, his son-in-law Johann Christoph Altnikol, and his student Johann Ludwig Krebs. Bach later arranged the piece in a version for two harpsichords and strings (BWV 1062), just as he did with many of his Cöthen concertos, to breathe new life into them for performances in Leipzig. Two violinists are equal soloists in this work, often sharing their musical material in close alternation. The opening movement (Vivace) begins with a fugal exposition in the orchestra, to which the solo violins respond (as a team) with a passage in which fluid melodic runs are given a memorable contour by sudden leaps of a tenth. The concerto’s Largo ma non tanto provides a particularly fine example of Bach’s ability to make time seem to stop while the players weave a magical tapestry from threads of poignancy, resignation, and tenderness. Anything would seem an intrusion after such a slow movement, but Bach offers an unusually blustery, even angry, Allegro finale.
https://www.themco.ca/bach-double-violin-concerto-bwv-1043/
Music compositions have a certain architecture or musical form. Can you hear that the structure of this concerto is made up of three different sections or movements? Bach was influenced by the Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) who wrote music using a three movement fast-slow-fast structure. In this concerto the movements are titled:
In fugal style, a principal theme or fragments of the theme are imitated in other parts or lines (voices) of the music. The imitating parts sometimes vary from the original theme in length and the key in which they are written. Can you hear the orchestra’s opening ritornello fugal passage repeated in whole or part during the first movement? Do you hear that the ritornello theme is made up of two contrasting parts? Can you hear the tutti (meaning “all” or whole orchestra) sections alternate with the two solo violinists? The alternation between tutti and solo sections is a common feature of Baroque ritornello concerto form.
Bar nos. No. of bars function keys
1-21 21 ritornello 1 d-d [V-I in dm in 21] [Other keys- note a] 22-29 7 solo d-A 30-37 7 bridge d-a 38-46 8 solo a-a 46-49 4 ritornello a-a 50-53 4 solo a-d 54 1 bridge d-a 55-59 4 ritornello [bass] a-g 59-62 4 solo g-c 63-75 12 bridge c-d 76-88 12 peroration d-D Before we continue further, it must be stressed that this guide is an extremely rough one. Analysis of the harmony of a section is impossible to achieve on a really meaningful level with the limitations of time, space and my expertise. Further, the division between sections and their functions are often ambiguous. With this in mind, we can look at the function of the sections. The ritornello and solo sections mean much the same thing as they do in stereotypical ritornello form. We do have more material here (the bridge passages) which is not ritornello or solo, the function of which is usually modulatory. The peroration at bar 77 recapitulates the material from bar 22, and then rounds of the piece with a tierce de picardie in the tonic to close the piece. https://blackened-air.livejournal.com/3919.html |
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