Although in earlier days the term "partita" (sometimes "partite") indicated a variation or set of variations, the term is known better to modern audiences as another word for "suite." Bach wrote 6 partitas for keyboard, which originally appeared in separate editions printed between 1726 and 1730, and later in a 1731 collection known as Clavier-Übung I–Bach’s ‘Opus 1’ publication. "Clavier-Übung" means ‘keyboard practice,’ a clear indication that these were primarily didactic works. The title page, however, indicates that the works were written "for music lovers, to delight their spirits." Thus, whatever educational purpose the works served–and they are great fingers exercises–Bach also intended the works to be pleasing to the listener. Indeed, because they follow the model of contemporary keyboard suites, the works have great diversity of style and content, as dictated by the stylistic norms for Baroque dances. The publication of these six keyboard partitas established Bach’s reputation as one of the preeminent keyboard composers of his time.

1. Overture

Partita No. 4 in D major, BWV 828, is a set of seven French dances. It opens with a dramatic French overture. In addition to the usual stately dotted rhythms of any French overture, the slow first section is marked by long scalar runs off the beat.

The mood changes dramatically, then, when Bach makes the usual choice of switching to compound triple meter (9/8) for the second section of the overture. The texture in general, of course, is polyphonic, following the convention for French overtures. Many scalar passages continue here, though these are more varied than those of the opening. Some are undulating and rather short, while others span more than two octaves.

2. Allemande

Typical of all allemandes, this one begins with a short upbeat. It is written in 4/4 time, and makes frequent use of scalar figures, so although scalar passages play a major role in the musical fabric of this partita, they are not necessarily used to draw connections between movements; here, in the allemande, scales are common practice; furthermore, given the limited sustaining ability of the harpsichord and its relatives, scales and scale passages are common in this era because they allow the composer to sustain a harmony and to provide connection between otherwise isolated or distant melodic ideas. [NOTE to all student performers: this is why you have to practice your scales–because they actually do come up in "real" music!]

Harmonically, this allemande is relatively straightforward, set clearly in D major, with the goal of the first half being the establishment of A major, the dominant key. The second half returns after a fashion to the tonic key. Nonetheless, Bach includes a few more colorful chords periodically either to help promote the progress towards the new tonal goal, or simply for variety. One of my favorites is the unexpected fully-diminished seventh about mid-way through the first half (m. 12) which jerks us suddenly into e minor:



Another pungent passage occurs in the second half, where C major unexpectedly arrives (in m. 37) and then is left just as quickly a measure later, with F#s, A#s, and C#s added to the melodic line. While this propels the music back in the direction of D major (The F#7 chord serves as dominant to B minor, relative minor of D major; the shift back to D from there is easy), Bach appears to have just dropped these accidentals on the page with no attempt to prepare the listener or smooth the transition. But perhaps this is merely because the bulk of Bach’s harmonic choices in the movement are so tame by comparison.



3. Courante

In Dance and the Music of J.S. Bach, Meredith Little and Natalie Jenne write:

The courante in Partita IV (BWV 828) is more problematic than any of its predecessors. Bach uses the internal shift of 3/2 and 6/4 meters in a subtler and more enigmatic fashion than he did in BWV 806, 814, and 819. Almost every measure is ambiguous and can be performed in several different ways, metrically. It is precisely because the performer must make a specific decision in every measure that this courante is so fascinating.

Let’s take a look at the score to see what Little and Jenne are talking about. I’ve marked the score to indicate the possibilities in a few measures.



In just the first three measures, you can see how, depending on how the performer accents the notes, any of these measures could be heard/seen as three groups of 2 (3/2) or two groups of 3 (6/4). I have marked in orange the 6/4 groupings, and in blue the 3/2. Sometimes, it appears Bach had one meter in mind for the upper voices and a different one for the lower.

4. Aria

This joyous, flowing movement is a bit more melodic than the more traditional stylized dance movements. Still, it’s hard to imagine a singer working her way through so much passage work. Perhaps a better image is a solo flute accompanied by keyboard, lute, or guitar

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2. Sarabande

A standard feature of the sarabande is for the strongest accent to fall on the second beat of the measure. Bach opens this sarabande with a dramatic, albeit short, falling ornamental figure leading to syncopation; the syncopation itself obscures the arrival of the second beat, but the presence of a strong dissonance (D against E and G) as the chord changes on the second beat balances out this effect.



This is a highly ornamented sarabande, again featuring numerous scalar passages, mixed here with arpeggiated figures for variety. For students looking for an example of musical sequence, the closing measures are ripe for inspection.



3. Menuet

When minuets appear in Bach’s suites, they tend to do so in pairs, and are performed in an ABA’ manner: minuet I, minuet II, minuet I again, though without repeats. Here, however, Bach includes a single minuet. It is rhythmically more complex than we tend to think of with regard to minuets, mixing duplet and triplet figures, and including some syncopation, flourishes and other ornaments. Bach has precedents for this kind of rhythmic complexity within a minuet–also in a keyboard suite, BWV 818a. When faced with dotted eighth-sixteenth figures in one part and simultaneous triplets in another, most performers will "swing" the dotted figures to align them with the triplets, rather than keeping allowing the sixteenth note to fall after the last note in the triplet. In the score below, measures with these simultaneous triplets and dotted figures are marked with yellow for the triplets and green for the dotted rhythms. In other cases, you can see where the primary division of the beat is triple (3) or duple (2) by the number marked above.



4. Gigue

"Partita IV (BWV 828) contains a giga unique in all of Baroque music–it is in 9/16, giving it two levels of tripleness below the beat (I-3-3). Handel wrote gigas in 24/16 and 12/16, and Kuhnau wrote one in 9/8, but only Bach, to our knowledge, uses 9/16 for a giga." (Little and Jenna, Dance and the Music of J.S. Bach [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991], 162-163.)

This gigue has the most textual variety of all the movements in Partita IV. It begins monophonically, with a single "voice" introducing the fugue subject.

A three-voice fugue emerges, but because of the rests and long notes written into the subject, even when all three voices are sounding there are times where, for a fleeting moment, we hear only two parts. At other times, the two upper voices "back off," dropping to dotted-eighth note ‘chords’ (strictly speaking, these are not chords, since there are only two pitches sounding, but it creates a more chordal effect) while the left hand takes the lead with exciting passages of constant sixteenths.

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©2002 Carol Traupman-Carr.