![]() ![]() The complex style of continuo, fascinating as it must have been, was out of style by the time Daube wrote about Bach (six years after the composer’s death), and remains out of style today, so we’ll never know exactly what it sounded like. ![]() Enough! He who has not heard has missed much.” ![]() This right was then extended to the bass without taking away from the upper voice. #Brandenburg convertos how toThrough him the upper voice came to life… He knew how to imitate it with either the right or left hand, or how to use a counter theme unexpectedly so that the listener would have sworn that it had been written that way… Generally his accompaniment was always like a concertante voice, which had been worked out with the greatest diligence, and which displaced the upper voice. “The most excellent Bach had perfected this third method to the highest degree. Apparently Bach was especially good at the complex style. The natural style was mainly for recitative, and the complex style was for plain pieces that could use some additional imitation or an extra voice. The simple style was for solos, trios, arias, and concertos. #Brandenburg convertos manualDaube, in a theory manual from 1756, divides continuo styles into simple, natural, and complex. Click here to view the manuscript up close. The bass and harpsichord (“violone e cembalo”) share the bottom line. Manuscript score of the Third Brandenburg Concerto. #Brandenburg convertos seriesJohann Quantz wrote in 1752, “Those that consist in a continual series of swift notes or quick passages, though ever so much admired by some, in general are not so pleasing as those of the more simple kind…” But how common was “swift note” continuo versus a simpler, chordal style? For instance, many treatises warn against overly flashy basso continuo playing. ![]() There are various treatises that give guidelines but it can be difficult to tell when the author is describing current practice and when the author is stating their opinion. So what did all this improvisation sound like during the Baroque period? We can make educated guesses about exactly how the music was performed but we don’t know for sure. Called basso continuo, this practice was common throughout the Baroque period and is one of the defining features of Baroque music. A composer like Bach would write the bassline for various instruments (in the Brandenburgs they’re cello and bass) and expect a harmony instrument (like the harpsichord) to extemporize its part based on the chords suggested by the bassline. However, improvisation is also at the foundation of Baroque music. Two of the Brandenburgs have cadenzas-there’s a shorter one in the Third Concerto over a held chord and a longer one in the Fifth Concerto.Ī compact cadenza in the Third Brandenburg: When we think of improvisation, we tend to think of a cadenza, the moment in a concerto when the orchestra drops out and the soloist plays a virtuosic fantasia. The Brandenburgs are no exception, so they make an interesting example of a sometimes-overlooked feature of Baroque music: how incredibly improvisational it is. Instead they cover nearly the entire gamut of what was possible in Baroque concertos-they push the concerto to its limits.īach is famous for his meticulously worked-out music. And, unlike his Art of the Fugue, Goldberg Variations, or even The Well-Tempered Clavier, they aren’t an in-depth study of one technique or theme or temperament. They have wildly different instrumentations, different sequences of movements, and different expressive characters. Bach wrote them as individual pieces and only retroactively compiled them into a collection. Unlike most other collections, these six works are vastly different from one another. Like other collections of Baroque or Classical music, they’re grouped in a set of six. They show Bach at his most vibrant, his most colorful, and they’re so unusual and challenging that it wasn’t until 1850 that these concertos really became popular. ![]()
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