Angela Hewitt BACH French Overture / Italian Concerto / Four Duets / Two Capriccios (12 /15)

It wasn’t until 1731, the year he turned forty-six, that Johann Sebastian Bach published his Opus 1, the six Partitas for solo keyboard that make up the first volume of his Clavierübung (Keyboard Practice). It proved to be such a success (we know of at least two printings) that four years later a second volume appeared bearing the title page:

Second part of the Keyboard Practice,
consisting of a Concerto after the Italian Taste and
an Overture after the French Manner,
for a harpsichord with two manuals.
Composed for music lovers, to refresh their spirits,
by Johann Sebastian Bach,
Capellmeister to His Highness the Prince of
Saxe-Weissenfels and Directore Chori Musici Lipsiensis.
Published by Christoph Weigel, Junior.

By choosing to write both an Italian Concerto and a French Overture, Bach not only demonstrated his skill in translating to the keyboard two of the most popular orchestral genres of the time, but also showed how marvellously he had assimilated the prevalent national styles of composition and performance, yet always sounding unmistakably like himself. The musical battle between the French and Italians goes as far back as Charlemagne, who returned from Rome with a group of Italian musicians, much to the displeasure of their French colleagues. Quarrels were still raging when Italian musicians were brought to Paris to sing in operatic productions in the early 1700s. Mattheson, the German composer and theorist, wrote in 1713: ‘The Italians may well boast as they please of their voices and of their arts, but let them try to write a real French overture, and in its true character at that … This means that French instrumental music has something particular to itself; although the Italians make the greatest efforts to excel in their sinfonias and in their concerts, which, truly enough, do not lack beauty, one has to prefer, however, a lively French overture.’ Not everybody stood up for the French. In 1753 Rousseau made the provocative remark: ‘The French have no music and cannot have any, but if they ever do, it will be all the worse for them.’ He also stated that ‘French singing is like an uninterrupted and unbearable barking’.

In the midst of these rivalries, German music was neglected. Le Cerf de la Viéville wrote that Germany ‘was not great in music, their compositions being as harsh and heavy as their genius’. Handel was no doubt the first German composer to be presented in France, but not until 1736. Bach was ignored. The latter faced criticism closer to home when Johann Adolf Scheibe wrote in his journal Der Critische Musicus (1737): ‘The great man would be the object of admiration if he possessed more pleasantness and made his compositions less turgid and sophisticated, more simple and natural in character.’ Bach was very hurt by this attack, and asked a friend, J A Birnbaum, professor of rhetoric at the University in Leipzig, to reply. The battle went on for months and ended in a stalemate. Yet in 1739 Scheibe published a review of Bach’s Italian Concerto that seemed to reverse his earlier decision: ‘… pre-eminent among works known through published prints is a clavier concerto of which the author is the famous Bach in Leipzig … Since this piece is arranged in the best fashion for this kind of work, I believe that it will doubtless be familiar to all composers and experienced clavier players, as well as to amateurs of the clavier and music in general. Who is there who will not admit at once that this clavier concerto is to be regarded as a perfect model of a well-designed solo concerto? But at the present time we shall be able to name as yet very few or practically no concertos of such excellent qualities and such well-designed execution. It would take as great a master of music as Mr Bach, who has almost alone taken possession of the clavier.’

Scheibe was a follower of the new ‘Art Galant’ which favoured the more melodic style of Bach’s sons rather than the formal counterpoint of their father. Perhaps that is why he was so taken with the Italian Concerto, as it leans more in this direction. All through his life, Bach learned by copying out works of other composers, among them Vivaldi, Albinoni, Corelli and Marcello. He was particularly drawn to the concerto grosso and transcribed many by Vivaldi for keyboard. Writing for a two-manual harpsichord gave him the opportunity to distinguish between tutti (full orchestra) and solo passages, indicating them with the words forte and piano. A pianist, having only one keyboard, must do this by changing dynamic level and tone colour. This distinction, however, is far from clear-cut all the time, and still requires a great deal of imagination on the part of the player. Often one hand is marked at a different dynamic level from the other.