ExclusiveBach: Violin Sonata no. 3 in C major, BWV 1005 II. Fuga (Guitar)

【Classical music and nature 古典音樂小站】Johann Sebastian Bach: Violin Sonata no. 3 in C major, BWV 1005 II. Fuga (Guitar). This beautiful piece was played by Laurindo Almeida. It has common licence (Public Domain Mark 1.0 Universal), and is provided through musopen.org.

Often, Bach’s solo works for violin are placed only in the German tradition, but there are more traces of Italian influence than you might expect. The set of six solos was probably created during Bach’s time in Köthen or Weimar, where he was very preoccupied with his Italian contemporaries. For example, his organ and harpsichord arrangements of concertos by Vivaldi (BWV 593 and 596) stem from his period in Weimar.

In this sonata, too, Bach appears to have been looking to Italy for inspiration. The mysterious first Adagio, for instance, seems just like the opening of the Adagio of the oboe concerto by Alessandro Marcello. Both pieces have bar after bar of slow, stacked notes, from which a melody then unfolds. In his time in Weimar, Bach arranged Marcello’s Oboe Concerto for harpsichord (BWV 974). Listening to the Adagio from BWV 974 alongside the Adagio from this sonata, there is an unmistakable similarity.

The fugues in the sonatas definitely appear to originate from the German tradition. Yet here too, Bach may have taken more inspiration from Italian music than you might think at first. For example, Bach’s fugues certainly display similarities to Arcangelo Corelli’s famous Sonatas for violin and basso continuo, opus 5, from 1700. In these sonatas, the violinist starts out alone in various movements, and Corelli suggests a fugue. But what is merely suggested by Corelli is rigorously carried out by Bach: real fugues for a single violinist.

The most impressive result is the monumental Fugue in this Sonata no. 3, which is full of contrapuntal tricks. First, the subject is combined with a chromatically descending line. Then it appears in stretto (statements of the subject that succeed one another ‘too rapidly’). And about halfway through the Fugue, the subject is inverted (ascending steps become descending steps, and vice versa). Afterwards, everything is combined. Although not exactly Italian, it has no German equivalent either.

Source: bachvereniging.nl

The video of lake Thun was captured by Simone Schlegel in Switzerland and edited by Wenjing Ma.

#classicalmusic, #Music, #古典音樂, #klassischemusik, #GJWexclusive, #Switzerland, #Schweiz, #Natur, #Nature, #KlassischeMusikundNatur, #ClassicalMusicAndNature, #古典音樂小站,