106: Brandenburg I

Today, we’re starting a series on the Brandenburg Concertos—today, some of the most celebrated Baroque orchestral concerti, but, 300 years, practically junk mail. As hard as it is to be believe, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the ruler of the area, received the six concerti we know and love today as a kind of “content portfolio” exactly like an artist in various media looking for commissions might set up on a website or social media presence. Bach’s idea was, essentially, “I want a job, this guy has the funds and an orchestra to hire me, so I’ll send him a sample of my work, have them play it for him, he’ll like it, and I’ll get hired.” That didn’t happen. The Margrave completely ignored the set—in modern terms, not even “thanks, but you’re not the right candidate for the position;” straight-up ghosting one of the greatest composers ever—and as far as I know didn’t tell anyone they existed.

I’ve said before that Mendelssohn was instrumental in bringing about a revival of Bach’s work (and he was, just not in this case!), but it was actually someone else, Siegfried von Dehn, who rediscovered them just after Mendelssohn died, right in time for the 100th anniversary of Bach’s death. Thanks to von Dehn, then, I have quite a long history with these concerti; I have heard stories that my mom, while expecting me, would commute with these concerti playing in her car so that I’d have something to listen to in utero. I have no reason to doubt this, so I’ve literally been hearing these concerti since before I was born. I—like almost everyone else who knows about these concerti, except, apparently the Margrave—really do love the concerti and know that they are some of the finest Baroque instrumental work out there, written by nothing short of a genius. So over the next six days (there are six concerti, in F, in F, in G, in G, and in B-flat), let’s go one by one exploring them.

Let’s start with perhaps the most noticeable thing about the first concerto: it’s quite long. It’s the only one of the six with four movements rather than 3, and the fourth movement is a collection of dances that is so long that it probably takes up half the total time required to play the concerto. The first movement is a series of ritornellos: a theme, something else, the original theme, something else, the original theme—somewhat like a cross between a concerto grosso and a rondo.

The first movement has no tempo indication written anywhere, but, as I said, having been listening to this concerto since literally while I was in utero, I can’t tell you I ever remember hearing anything other than what I’d describe as “Allegro.” (It is, of course, typical, for concerti of this period to follow fast-slow-fast.) Let’s look at the ritornello. Your ear might be drawn initially to the strings (mine naturally is, anyway, as a string player all my life), and if that’s the case, then make a concerted effort to also listen to the wind parts. If you do, you’ll notice a very particular texture that’s due to a phenomenon we covered a long time ago—actually, if memory serves, on my birthday, or at most within a day or two: only natural horns existed at the time, not valved ones, so in a concerto in F, you were limited to these kind of fanfare-y, hunting call-esque horn parts. If you know what to listen for, they become particularly evident. A good recording is one in which the natural horn parts don’t just fill in the gaps left by the strings, but actually sing out and shine on their own merits. One final quick historical tidbit before we move on to the second movement. Recalling back to our discussion of parody a few months ago (not “hahaha” satire, but the reuse of musical material—I have an article where I give several prominent examples), note that the first movement is also the sinfonia of the cantata from Leipzig, BWV 52.

The second movement is a beautiful, vintage, Bach minor movement. There’s something about Bach’s minor writing for oboe that, more than anyone else’s writing for the instrument in minor, so incredibly effectively tugs at your heartstrings, and makes you feel not just a flat, simple “sad,” but a depth of melancholy, grief, longing, and so much more. To use a single word in Portuguese, the Bachian oboe in minor is such a great vehicle for the emotional pull of “saudade.” But, of course, saudade is resolvable when you once again meet the person, place, experience, etc., for which you feel the emotion. And, in a sense, in that his final cadence in the minor movement goes to a major chord, we get some hope that the feeling subsided, but, at the same time, ultimately, the question is left unresolved since the chord to which the final cadence goes is the major dominant, not the major tonic, and we have a half cadence rather than an authentic one.

The third movement of Brandenburg 1 returns to major and is a rather folk-y, exuberant dance, through and through, in simple ternary form. Here too, listen for the horn parts—what I said earlier about the hunting-like horn calls and that texture due to their valvelessness (they wouldn’t be invented and widespread until the end of Beethoven’s life). Here, because it’s so contrapuntal, pay attention to the interaction between the sections. It’s never just one supporting the other; the strings and the winds are in a constant melodic game of hot-potato. This kind of counterpoint was Bach’s bread and butter, and his skills really were unmatched. Everything about this counterpoint is absolutely perfect, so take your time listening to it to really get a grasp of what he’s doing.

Now we come to the dances. The first one in the fourth movement is a minuet. We’ve covered minuets before (go check out that article if you haven’t read it yet), so I won’t spend too much explaining what they are, but I will say this: it’s immediately obvious that you’re listening to a fun, lively dance in 3. I will say one thing about the orchestration that I’ve already said regarding the two fast movements we’ve heard: pay attention to what the natural horns are doing in the minuet. It’s clearest here, and, if you pick up on it now, you can go back and listen to the other movements.

Minuets always have trios with them. Traditionally, these are stylistically contrasting sections to the main “minuet” part of the dance. In this case, though not always, the trio is a literal trio: two oboes and a bassoon. Take special care to listen to how contrasting the sections are; that’s one of the hallmarks of a great trio. This trio has almost a sort of mournful quality to it, especially due to the combination of oboe and bassoon. However, looking at the oboe lines, it is still a dance, and that should, in a good recording or performance, always remain obvious. Finally regarding the trio, notice the walking bass of the bassoon: very rhythmically regular, very stepwise, and nothing at all unexpected. 

The next section is an identical repeat of the minuet we just heard. Nothing new happens whatsoever—no instrumentation switches, no modulations, no dynamic contrast. It’s literally a perfect copy, so I won’t say much else.

The section that follows the second reprise of the minuet, however, is a new dance form: the polacca (also called a “polonaise.”). This is, in fact, still today, one of the most important dance forms in Polish dance culture. (Apparently, according to Wikipedia, in Poland, at their high school proms, the first song played is always one of these. If this gets to anyone who is Polish or who has been to a Polish prom, please leave a comment telling me about your experience.) Now the Polonaise is normally a rather moderate dance, always in 3. But depending on which recording you have of Brandenburg 1, it can either be exactly that, or so fast that it needs to be felt in 1, a beat per bar, almost at a speed I’d associate more with Kommt, eilet und laufet (the beginning of the Easter Oratorio) than a typical Brandenburg 1.

After the Polacca, we again hear the minuet. Nothing new happens. It’s literally a perfect copy, so I won’t say much else.

After this third minuet, however, we do get something new: a new trio, not just a recap of the old trio. There are certainly 3 lines in this trio, but not 3 instruments, as would be typical. Instead, Horn I and Horn II play, but so do Oboe I, II, and III; all 3 oboes play the same part. This trio is nothing like the previous one and returns to the characteristic rustic bubbliness you have by now come to expect out of the concerto. The oboes are in this case the bass line, so pay particular attention to how leap-y their line is.

Finally, we have one more minuet. Nothing new happens. Having reached this point, we’ve gone through the whole first concerto! Happy listening! Here are some recordings:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcCccTpSwdU

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK4CiieG27k

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Waj0oHoJOFg

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWEHKTyaVc0



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

54: Trills in the Baroque vs. Classical Periods

Image
Baroque music is known for its incredibly technical and ornamented style. The most common and fundamental of those ornaments is our focus today: the trill. Most simply, a trill is a very fast, repeated alternation of two notes. In the vast majority of cases, those notes are adjacent, but that is not a requirement. Given how fast and common they are, regardless of what you play—whether it’s a string, wind, or keyboard instrument, or your voice—they have a reputation for being quite tiring to play. The period matters when considering a trill. Classical and later composers treat trills, in a sense, in the opposite manner than Baroque composers do. Let me show you two examples: First, the Baroque way of thinking. This is a PAC:   and especially in the Baroque era, when the plucked harpsichord dominated over the hammered piano, it was hard to sustain sounds for long since the sound of the plucking decays quickly. The trill was developed in response, out of a need both to ornam...
Read more

35: Figured Bass

Image
  There’s a system of notating harmonies that’s rather unique to the Baroque era, but which is so frequently used there, and so important to it, that no discussion of theory would ever be complete if we did not cover it. This is the notation of figured bass: “figured,” in the sense of using figures (numbers) to notate the bass. Figured bass was, in a sense, its own notation completely separate from the five lines and four spaces of the staff, which was nearly exclusively the purview of cellists, bassists, harpsichords, and organists.  Figured bass, fair warning, can be intimidating at first. But, just as with anything else we’ve covered so far, the more you practice reading it, the better you’ll get.  In this system, we use numbers to indicate intervals above the bass. We stack them, and this is how we build chords. If you can’t stack them, nowadays, it’s perfectly fine to use slashes and write the numbers horizontally.  Let’s start with the easiest figured bass nota...
Read more

102: Wagner (who was terrible, in case you didn't know), Tristan, and French Sixths

Image
 Let’s turn our attention to one chord—yes, one literal chord, not one class: F-B-D#-A. The original context that made this “The Chord” that everyone talks about—the reason this opera is as famous as it is—is its inclusion in Richard Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde.” The whole opera lasts just shy of four hours, but it’s most remembered for this one chord. Here it is, in red, from the Wikipedia article about the opera, during which a hugely significant amount of time is spent just talking about this single chord. It almost cannot be overstated how important this chord was to the development of music in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Some have said—again, referring to quotes in the Wikipedia article—that the power of this one chord in the late 1800s was the same as the transformative power of Beethoven 3 or 9 in the first part of the 1800s; I don’t think that’s hyperbole in the slightest. Deplorable as his personal politics were (he was violently antisemitic and the favorite com...
Read more