This is an important feature of Bach's melodic style and even the single subject of a fugue will contain contrapuntal elements within it. The latter was in turn influenced by the 'broken style' of the French lutenists who found a way to suggest more than one part within a single line. From Froberger, a German harpsichordist who lived in France, he assimilated the French keyboard style. Unlike Handel, who studied in Italy, Bach absorbed much of his Italian influence by copying out large amounts of Vivaldi. One need look no further than any of the Bach keyboard suites - the so-called French Suites (such as the French Suite No.4 in Eb, BMV.815), English Suites (for example, the English Suite No.3 in G: 1.Prélude 2.Allemande 3.Courante 4.Sarabande 5.Gavottes I and II 6.Gigue), and the Partitas ( No.1 in Bb No.2 in C No.3 in A No.4 in D No.5 in g and the No.6 in E) to see the comfortable juxtaposition of a French Allemande with an Italian Corrente, followed by a French Saraband overlaid with flamboyant, Italian operatic ornamentation.īach's cosmopolitan style belies the fact that he travelled so little, although in his youth he did famously walk 200 miles to hear Buxtehude play the organ. French music, on the other hand, grows out of a love for wind instruments and dancing, and the emotional quality is often subtle and less overt. The Italian style, with its emphasis on operatic singing and string playing, tends to be more rhythmically straight forward, emotionally extroverted, and prone to the use of repeating harmonic sequences. The descending thirds give us a large structural I, ii, V, I cadential progression that girds the entire piece.īach's music also synthesizes the prevailing French and Italian styles that dominated the Baroque era. For instance, in the great Preludium of the Partita for Solo Violin, the constant stream of sixteenth notes reach important arrival and departure points on E, c#, A, f#, B, and back to E.

While his music often has the linear complexity of Renaissance polyphony, it also has a sure and inevitable harmonic architecture that always gives the music a sense of solid form and direction. Two hundred and fifty years later, Schumann, great student of Bach that he was, would declare that in the chess game of music melody is the queen but the game depends on harmony, the king.īach's music reconciles these two aspects the horizontal (melodic) and the vertical (harmonic) in complete balance. The concept of melody with harmonic accompaniment was the beginning of thinking about harmony and harmonic progressions as an important entity and not just the by-product of intersecting lines. Early Baroque opera led to our modern concept of harmony by declaring the primacy of a single melodic line supported by chords designated by a figured bass. The Baroque era began as a reaction against the highly refined and intellectual Flemish contrapuntal style that is the essence of the high Renaissance. This is a pithy way of saying that the music of Johann Sebastian Bach is the culmination of not only the Baroque era, but the Renaissance as well. It has been observed that Bach's melodies are harmonically conceived and his harmonies melodically conceived.

List of all bach compositions