71: A Curious Baroque Case in Minor

If you look at scores of Baroque works in minor, you may notice something curious: they are sometimes notated as if they were in the dominant key of where they are actually written. (I first noticed this—and wanted to figure out the reason—years ago, when, as soon as I graduated from high school, I got a book with the scores for BWV 1001-1006 and BWV 1014-1019, and I started deeply studying some of these works I had never heard before (BWV 1014-1019, at the time) or (I’m now embarrassed to say) hadn’t given nearly as much listening attention as I should have (BWV 1001-1006).

My first exposure to BWV 1001 was many years earlier at a studio recital; I think it was the first one that I remember during which Laura played something herself (she would go on to play with her son(s), brother, and the parents of fellow students, nearly every other recital thereafter), when she played the Adagio for us. Laura, I don’t know if you know this blog exists, but if you do and you’re seeing this, I’m many, many years late, but thank you for that introduction to unaccompanied Bach, from the bottom of my heart.

That recital introduced me to this new world, but it took years before I saw the score. (I think—but I could be wrong—my middle school orchestra director had the first few bars in the background of our orchestra’s website, and singing out what I saw on the screen, that reminded me of Laura’s performance, so I connected the two and realized the Adagio was in the header).

I didn’t realize it at the time—it took until that graduation gift for me to see this—but there’s a trick hidden in plain sight in the score of the G minor sonata, in the fact that it’s “written in D minor” even though it’s clearly a G minor sonata.

Recall from some of the very first articles I published that there are essentially four minors: natural, melodic, harmonic, and Dorian. 

·      G natural minor just follows its key signature, so G A Bb C D Eb F G. 

·      G melodic minor (going up, anyway) is G A Bb C D E F# G (natural, but with a raised sixth and seventh); going down, recall that melodic minor reverts those changes and is identical to natural.

·      G harmonic minor is G A Bb C D Eb F# G (keep the lowered sixth, but raise the seventh). 

·      And G dorian is G A Bb C D E F G (raise the sixth, but keep the lowered seventh)

The only constant here is the Bb, the third degree; the sixth and seventh degrees (E or Eb, and F or F#) can vary quite a lot, since something being “in minor” doesn’t necessarily lock you into any of the four, and composers will use whichever note suits them best at that moment.

To allow themselves the freedom to make these alterations to the sixth and seventh more freely, some composers would write minor as if it were in the dominant—hence why Bach wrote the G minor sonata in what appears to be D minor.

That way, you’re more free to write in G melodic minor, assuming unless told otherwise that Es are E-naturals, rather than, if written with 2 flats but still intended as G melodic minor, having to cancel out every flat on an E-flat to turn it into an E-natural, since the key signature reigns supreme as the default. 

This doesn’t always happen—actually, of the unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas for Violin and the Six Cello Suites (the pinnacles of Baroque solo writing for each instrument), BWV 1001 is the only one that originally has this strange key signature—but if you ever come across it, as I did, I wanted to have something out there to explain why it is the way it is.

If you look at scores of Baroque works in minor, you may notice something curious: they are sometimes notated as if they were in the dominant key of where they are actually written. (I first noticed this—and wanted to figure out the reason—years ago, when, as soon as I graduated from high school, I got a book with the scores for BWV 1001-1006 and BWV 1014-1019, and I started deeply studying some of these works I had never heard before (BWV 1014-1019, at the time) or (I’m now embarrassed to say) hadn’t given nearly as much listening attention as I should have (BWV 1001-1006).

My first exposure to BWV 1001 was many years earlier at a studio recital; I think it was the first one that I remember during which Laura played something herself (she would go on to play with her son(s), brother, and the parents of fellow students, nearly every other recital thereafter), when she played the Adagio for us. Laura, I don’t know if you know this blog exists, but if you do and you’re seeing this, I’m many, many years late, but thank you for that introduction to unaccompanied Bach, from the bottom of my heart.

That recital introduced me to this new world, but it took years before I saw the score. (I think—but I could be wrong—my middle school orchestra director had the first few bars in the background of our orchestra’s website, and singing out what I saw on the screen, that reminded me of Laura’s performance, so I connected the two and realized the Adagio was in the header).

I didn’t realize it at the time—it took until that graduation gift for me to see this—but there’s a trick hidden in plain sight in the score of the G minor sonata, in the fact that it’s “written in D minor” even though it’s clearly a G minor sonata.

Recall from some of the very first articles I published that there are essentially four minors: natural, melodic, harmonic, and Dorian. 

·      G natural minor just follows its key signature, so G A Bb C D Eb F G. 

·      G melodic minor (going up, anyway) is G A Bb C D E F# G (natural, but with a raised sixth and seventh); going down, recall that melodic minor reverts those changes and is identical to natural.

·      G harmonic minor is G A Bb C D Eb F# G (keep the lowered sixth, but raise the seventh). 

·      And G dorian is G A Bb C D E F G (raise the sixth, but keep the lowered seventh)

The only constant here is the Bb, the third degree; the sixth and seventh degrees (E or Eb, and F or F#) can vary quite a lot, since something being “in minor” doesn’t necessarily lock you into any of the four, and composers will use whichever note suits them best at that moment.

To allow themselves the freedom to make these alterations to the sixth and seventh more freely, some composers would write minor as if it were in the dominant—hence why Bach wrote the G minor sonata in what appears to be D minor.

That way, you’re more free to write in G melodic minor, assuming unless told otherwise that Es are E-naturals, rather than, if written with 2 flats but still intended as G melodic minor, having to cancel out every flat on an E-flat to turn it into an E-natural, since the key signature reigns supreme as the default. 

This doesn’t always happen—actually, of the unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas for Violin and the Six Cello Suites (the pinnacles of Baroque solo writing for each instrument), BWV 1001 is the only one that originally has this strange key signature—but if you ever come across it, as I did, I wanted to have something out there to explain why it is the way it is.