François Couperin was the most important member of the
illustrious Couperin family and was one of the leading
composers of the French Baroque era. He is best known
for his harpsichord works, all of which are found in
the collection of more than 220 pieces entitled Pièces
de clavecin, consisting of four books. His music showed
the influence of Lully and incorporated elements from
the Italian school. Indeed, both these sources would be
acknowledged by Couperin himself in two chamber works,
Apoth...(+)
François Couperin was the most important member of the
illustrious Couperin family and was one of the leading
composers of the French Baroque era. He is best known
for his harpsichord works, all of which are found in
the collection of more than 220 pieces entitled Pièces
de clavecin, consisting of four books. His music showed
the influence of Lully and incorporated elements from
the Italian school. Indeed, both these sources would be
acknowledged by Couperin himself in two chamber works,
Apothéose de Corelli (1724) and Apothéose de Lully
(1725). Moreover, he successfully integrated the French
and Italian styles in his Les goût réunis ou nouveaux
concerts (1724), a collection of chamber compositions
for unspecified instruments. Many of his works were
lost to posterity, as none of his original manuscripts
has survived.
This barely counts as a Bach composition, for it is a
very straightforward transcription of the fourth
movement of the trio sonata L'impériale from François
Couperin's Les Nations. It is not even certain that
Bach made the transcription himself, but if he did,
it's likely that he fashioned this version around the
same time he was writing his own trio sonatas for organ
-- suggesting that he would have had to have gotten his
hands on Couperin's original shortly after its 1726
publication. This is basically a da capo aria in its
simplest ABA format. If the easily loping A section
were just a bit less brisk, it would sound pastoral.
One of its principal features is a repeated two-note
motif, which is doubled to become the basis of the
freely ornamented B section.
I created this Arrangement of the transcription of the
fourth movement (Aria in F Major) of the trio sonata
from L'impériale (BWV 586) for Guitar Trio.
SHEET MUSIC