Partita in A minor for solo flute by Johann Sebastian
Bach (BWV 1013) is a partita in 4 movements, probably
composed around 1718. The title, however, is the work
of 20th-century editors. The title in the only
surviving 18th-century manuscript is "Solo pour une
flûte traversière par J. S. Bach". The movements are
marked: Allemande, Corrente, Sarabande and Bourrée
angloise.
As is the case with so many of J.S. Bach's chamber
works, we know virtually nothing about the
circumstances in wh...(+)
Partita in A minor for solo flute by Johann Sebastian
Bach (BWV 1013) is a partita in 4 movements, probably
composed around 1718. The title, however, is the work
of 20th-century editors. The title in the only
surviving 18th-century manuscript is "Solo pour une
flûte traversière par J. S. Bach". The movements are
marked: Allemande, Corrente, Sarabande and Bourrée
angloise.
As is the case with so many of J.S. Bach's chamber
works, we know virtually nothing about the
circumstances in which the Partita in A minor for
unaccompanied flute, BWV 1013 was composed. It was
probably written sometime during the early 1720s,
during the last few years of Bach's tenure as
kapellmeister at Cöthen (a job that gave him ample
freedom to explore secular chamber music), and at any
rate could not have been composed before leaving Weimar
in 1717.
Bach's other works for unaccompanied instruments (other
than keyboard and lute) -- the Suites for solo cello,
BWV 1007-1012 and the Sonatas and Partitas for solo
violin, BWV 1001-1006 -- were all informed to one
degree or another by his own skill as a string
instrument performer (this is not to say that he was
necessarily accomplished enough to perform them
adequately; indeed, evidence indicates that he was not,
and perhaps never tried). With the flute Partita,
however, Bach was left almost entirely to his own
ingenuity, as neither tradition nor personal
familiarity could come into much play during the
creation of so unlikely a work.
It is a dance-suite proper in which each of the four
most common species of the day -- allemande, courante,
sarabande, and bourrée -- makes an appearance, and in
which the same remarkable blend of actual tones and
implied counterpoint that fuels the violin and cello
works is found to be the driving force; it is music of
uncommon charm and high Baroque grace.
Lengthiest of the Partita's four movements is the
opening allemande, whose running sixteenth-notes
outline a broad binary design. As with those movements
from the solo violin and cello works that are
exclusively melodic (meaning only that no
multiple-stopping of the strings is called for) -- such
as the "Allemanda" from the D minor violin Partita,
very similar in plan to this flute allemande -- there
are frequent leaps from one register to another as Bach
engages to make melodically plain the implied harmonic
voices (bass, treble, etc.) around which the music is
written. In each half, the approach to the cadence is
made via some juicy, chromatically descending miniature
arpeggios.
The courante movement (or, to follow Bach's title more
exactly, Corrente), following the Allemande as
tradition demands, is of the livelier Italian-derived
variety, relatively quick-tempoed and in simple triple
meter. Also true to tradition are the assymetrical
dimensions of the movement's two "halves": twenty-two
bars, forty-one bars. Truly striking is the unexpected
high D sharp that the flute hollers out near the end of
the first half, by leap no less, and then leaves
without ever resolving in the same register, forcing us
to be content with an E natural an octave lower.
After an aristocratic sarabande of ingenious rhythmic
flexibility, Bach concludes the Partita with a Bourrée
Anglais -- then in vogue throughout Europe, to judge
from the many appearances of this particular subspecies
of the bourrée that pop up in the music of Bach,
Handel, and others. Probably the most immediately
arresting of the four movements (the others are slower
to give up their treasures, not less rich), it is built
around the bourrée's typical "backwards"
short-short-long rhythm, set up in this case as the
counterbalance for more florid running sixteenth-note
passages and, as we approach the final cadence to A,
some remarkably staid chromatic eighth notes.
This piece was written entirely for Solo (Transverse)
Flute.
PARTITION