Complete Keyboard Transcriptions of Concertos by Baroque Composers

Johann Sebastian Bach

Feb 2013 · Courier Corporation

About this ebook

Early in his career, Bach began to transcribe for the keyboard a number of concertos for violin, oboe, and other instruments by such baroque masters as Vivaldi and Telemann. His purpose: to study and explore the works of other composers as well as to supply good clavier music for his own performances.
This collection of sixteen of these celebrated transcriptions is reprinted from the definitive Bach-Gesellschaft edition prepared by Ernst Naumann and presented in a study format designed to give amateur and professional pianists and harpsichordists a lifetime of pleasurable study and use.
Six of these glorious keyboard works are known to be transcriptions of Vivaldi violin concertos. Three are based on concertos written by Duke Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, the son of Bach's employer at Weimar. One is based on a violin concerto by Telemann, another on an oboe concerto by Alessandro Marcello, and another on a concerto by Benedetto Marcello. The sources of the remaining works are unknown.
Vivaldi, whose music Bach probably first heard in 1712, was to provide a strong influence on the young composer. Bach would eventually assimilate the Italian's style and use it with his own contrapuntal heritage and the Northern idiom in creating what we recognize today as the typical Bach style. These transcriptions, which represent his introduction to the new idiom, richly display a dynamic virtuosity that makes their performance an exhilarating experience.

About the author

Composer, organist, and the most famous of an illustrious family of German musicians, Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685. He was a master of polyphonic baroque music-a musical form characterized by the use of multiple parts in harmony and by an ornate, exuberant style. Bach's father, Johann Ambrosius, taught his son to play the violin at a very early age. At age 10, after both of his parents died, Bach lived with his brother Johann Christoph, an organist, who taught him to play keyboard instruments. Bach's musical genius, however, soon surpassed his brother's skill. During his lifetime, Bach was known more for his skill as an organist than as a composer. His fame as a composer did not come until years after his death, when his works were discovered by the composers Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann and published in the 1800s. Between 1703 and 1717, Bach served as an organist in the German cities of Arnstadt, Muhlhausen, and Weimar. During that time, he wrote chorales, cantatas, concertos, preludes, and fugues, primarily for the organ. These works fused Italian, French, and German characteristics with a profound mastery of the contrapuntal technique. While serving as music director at the court of a German prince from 1717 to 1723, Bach wrote many compositions for the clavier and instrumental ensembles. These included preludes, fantasies, toccatas, and dance suites that served as both music instruction and entertainment. Of these works, the best known is the Well-Tempered Clavier, a series of preludes and fugues composed in 1722 and Bach's last position as cantor and music director of St. Thomas's Church in Leipzig (1724--50), exerted considerable influence on Lutheran church music. During this period, he composed as many as 300 cantatas, 200 of which have been preserved. After his death at the age of 65, Bach became revered as one of the world's greatest composers, and his compositions are regarded by many as the most sublime music ever composed.