Dedicated 1721; 16 minutes

The “Six Concertos for Several Instruments,” as Bach titled his six Brandenburg Concertos, were not entirely new compositions.  Some of the movements exist in earlier versions.  The scores were likely performed by musicians at the court in Cöthen, since their scoring matches that of the instruments at the Calvinist court, where, as Kapellmeister, Bach was required to provide instrumental rather than sacred choral music.  When he decided to compile the concertos as a collection for the margrave (likely by way of an application for a position in the margrave’s musical establishment), Bach aimed to demonstrate his ability to write both in the latest Italian style and to master all the varied traditions of the Italian and German concerto form.  Unusually for a collection of Baroque concertos, each Brandenburg concerto has a unique instrumental grouping and sound world.  

The Sixth was probably the first concerto to be written.  In it, Bach stands Baroque convention on its head.  Where five of the Brandenburgs make a striking use of contrasting timbres and present a kaleidoscope of string, wind and brass sonorities, for the conclusion to the set, Bach restricts himself to just strings and harpsichord continuo.  Within the string texture, Bach limits himself even further by not including violins, a choice with few precedents.  The work is scored for two violas, two violas da gamba, cello and continuo (harpsichord and violone - another instrument from the gamba family).  Both gambas and violone are customarily played by their modern descendants these days, as they will be this evening.  The contrast in textures between the small concerto group (the concertino, as it was known in the Baroque concerto), and the larger ensemble (the ripieno) remains.  

The scoring of the Sixth Brandenburg is ultimately a musical challenge that Bach set for himself and one that he overcomes by providing maximum contrast within the texture.  The first movement presents brilliant canonic interplay between the two violas.  In the slow movement, the violas weave an extended aria, imitating one another with ravishing results and, curiously, ending in an altogether different key than the one with which they began the movement.  The musical repartee flies back and forth in the finale.  It has the character of a fugal gigue, but, in fact, its musical form is that of a set of variations on the theme heard at the beginning.  

Bach (pictured left) didn’t name his six concertos Brandenburg Concertos; the name came in 1873 from the pen of Philip Spitta, a music historian who was Bach’s second biographer. The concertos were first published in 1850, on the centenary of Bach’s death. Before this, Bach’s original manuscript of the Brandenburgs – music that we now regard, together with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, as a high point of the Baroque concerto – lay neglected in a Prussian library. Handwritten copies had circulated and, if he did hear them performed after Bach presented them to him on March 24, 1721, Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg (pictured right) would have had his own copies made before returning the beautifully handwritten manuscript to his library shelves to gather dust.