It was during his youthful tenure in Weimar (1708-1713) that J.S. Bach composed the “Great” Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543. Only a few years earlier, the 20-year-old Bach walked north 200 miles to Lübeck to hear the celebrated organist, Dieterich Buxtehude, and “to comprehend one thing and another about his art.” The influence of Buxtehude’s style, along with the Italian music of Corelli, can be heard in BWV 543, …
Composed in Weimar, circa 1713, J.S. Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in A minor, BWV 944 amounts to a warmup, followed by a herculean feat of athleticism. The warmup, for our ears, the players fingers, and the instrument alike, comes with the brief ten-bar Fantasia. Bach notated this opening as chords, with the instruction, “arpeggio.” The player is free to improvise on a harmonic progression which is at once melancholy, mysterious, and sensuous. …
Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagioni) is one of the earliest and most iconic examples of programmatic music. Vivaldi composed the collection of four violin concerti, each depicting a season of the year, during his tenure as music director at the court chapel of Mantua. Together with eight additional concerti, the works were published in Amsterdam in 1725 under the enticing title, Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (“The Contest Between Harmony and …
Handel’s 1724 celebrated opera, Giulio Cesare in Egitto, HWV 17 (“Julius Caesar in Egypt”), explores themes of “power, ambition, love, and revenge.” Set during the Roman Civil War of 49-45 BC, it chronicles the love story between Caesar and the cunning seductress Cleopatra. Amid this political drama, Cornelia and her stepson Sesto are determined to avenge the beheading of Pompeo (Cordelia’s husband) by Tolomeo, who rules Egypt with his sister, Queen Cleopatra. …
The Prelude and Fugue No. 8 in E-flat minor, BWV 853 comes from Book 1 of J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier. Beginning with the purity of C major, the two-volume collection is made up of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys. The key of E-flat (or enharmonic D-sharp) was rarely used during the Baroque period. For BWV 853, Bach transposed a previously written D minor fugue into D-sharp minor. …
Hailed as “a second to Corelli,” Nicola Matteis (c. 1650-1713) was the earliest Italian Baroque virtuoso violinist to settle in London. He is credited with introducing to England something closer to the modern bow hold. His son, Nicola Matteis II (1670-1737), a violinist and composer as well, left England in 1700 for Vienna, where he composed ballets for the imperial opera. His Fantasia in A minor for solo violin was written in …
The bass aria, Komm, süsses Kreuz (“Come, sweet Cross”), comes near the end of the second part of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244, first performed in 1727. Its text speaks of the suffering of Christ in his final days. Arriving in the story’s most desolate moments, the veiled accompaniment of the viola da gamba (often played by the cello in modern performances) hovers as a gloomy and inescapable presence. The …