Happy Sunday! We continue with our Bachian Sundays, now with works that are really known and that are usually heard regularly at concerts. It is impressive how the maestro was able to compose for more than one instrument… and we will get to hear up to four keys.
Before, we go as always with something about the biography of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), German composer born in Eisenach and died in Leipzig. In his copy of the Calov Bible he wrote “A splendid demonstration that … music has been ordained by the spirit of God,” regarding a passage in the book of Chronicles. It was common for him to see the mighty hand of God in the art of music. Proof of this is the famous Soli Deo Gloria with which he signed many of his compositions. He borrowed the Hebrew notion of the presence of the invisible in a physical phenomenon (in this case the musical). For Lutheran theology the metaphysical presence of God’s grace replaced the visible proof of the physical. For him, the presence of God was the true sound of music.
Let’s hear the Concerto for two harpsichords, strings and continuo in C minor, BWV 1062. It is preserved in Bach’s own autograph score, albeit in a revised version dating from around 1736. It seems to be a version of a double concerto for two violins. Bach thickened the textures so that the continuo itself is the left hand of the second harpsichord, while the melodic activity is enriched in the right hand. The careful dynamic marches are also a distinctive sign of the master’s creative hand. The scholar Hans-Joachim Schulze has ventured to say that the soloists when this concerto was premiered were the composer himself and his student Johann Ludwig Krebs (or his son Wilhelm Friedemann).
The score of the work can get yourself here.
The interpretation is Gustav Leonhardt and Bob van Asperen (harpsichords) and Melante Amsterdam.
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Bach, concerto for two harpsichords, BWV 1062