Organ, virginals, harpsichord, clavichord or fortepiano – these instruments have often shared the same repertoire before the rise of the piano in the last third of the 18th century. While solo pieces dominated from the Renaissance onward – fantasies, ricercares, canzones, fugues, and toccatas – keyboards also distinguished themselves in accompanying singers, reducing entire polyphonies, and providing harmonic support to orchestras or chamber ensembles through basso continuo. The piano concerto emerged later, as a result of an emancipatory gesture. In Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.5 and Concerto for Flute, Violin, Strings, and Continuo, BWV 1044, the harpsichord steps out of its accompanying role to become a soloist in its own right. It even replaces the orchestra and takes on both roles – that of soloist and “ripienist”, or member of the ensemble. Handel took a similar approach in his 1711 opera Rinaldo: the aria “Vo far guerra” incorporates a veritable miniature concerto for the keyboard thanks to the composer’s virtuoso improvisations, partly notated by William Babell and later published by John Walsh.
In Leipzig, during the 1730s, Bach wrote fourteen concertos for one, two, three, or four harpsichords, which defined the genre and started dignifying it. The choice of the Italian format in three movements of fast-slow-fast, the adoption of the ritornello form for the fast sections (a form based on the return of an instrumental refrain in different keys), the skillful balance of the parts and the economy of the thematic material are its main features – such as in the Concerto in D minor BWV 1052, the most famous and most frequently performed of the corpus. The work was originally intended for the violin before being transformed into a sinfonia with obbligato organ (in the Cantatas BWV 146 and 188) and then into a concerto for keyboard. The whole work was then transposed down a fifth to suit the range of the new instrument. The original violin figures are entrusted to the right hand and reworked into ornamental arabesques, arpeggios, octaves, or chords adjusted to the keyboard. The left hand is shaped from the basso continuo part. The work combines a lively and rapid Italian style, eloquent discourse, dense polyphonic texture, and continuous solo playing. The often dramatic character is established by the unison, toccata style, harmonic luxuriance, and skillfully crafted chromaticism.
Practiced by Bach and his sons, the genre quickly gained popularity, even though the terminology and choice of soloist were not always clearly defined, as evidenced by the fifteen Sonatinas for harpsichord and instruments written by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, or his Concerto Wq. 47, in which the harpsichord is associated with the fortepiano, as if the choice between the “old instrument” and the “new” was still relevant. Concerto Wq. 23, written between 1745 and 1748 while the musician was working at the court of Berlin, is marked by the influence of Empfindsamkeit. This Pietist movement, known as “sensibility”, appeared in northern Germany in the 1730s and advocated an inner experience of faith. Transposed into music, it resulted in the search for a new expressiveness, perceptible from the very first bars of the concerto, in the long ritornello that opens it. Frequent pauses, dotted rhythms, wide interval leaps, drumming basses, prolonged trills, and severe unison dramatise the narrative. The same qualities are maintained in a slow, meditative movement, followed by a nervous finale with sharp contrasts and eloquent silences.
Thanks to Mozart’s genius, the keyboard concerto soon enjoyed its first golden age, becoming, along with opera, the domain in which the musician excelled. His twenty-three keyboard works achieved a level of perfection rarely equalled since. Under his pen, the genre became a dramatic stage where light and shadow, intimacy and grandeur, tragedy and comedy constantly alternated. The formal, instrumental, and expressive solutions are renewed from work to work. Thus, in Concerto No. 17, the wind instruments take on more thematic weight than the strings; the central development is structured in the manner of an improvised fantasy, and the recapitulation restates the themes in an order that defies all logic. The beautiful slow movement multiplies clashes and friction, presenting four thematic elements without any one taking precedence over the others. The finale is a theme and variations crowned by a Presto that is as surprising as it is jubilant.
Concerto No. 23 is moving for its melodic flourishes bordering on grace, its theatrical effects—such as the virtuoso bassoon parts in the finale – and its melodies springing forth from all sides, producing a lively and natural conversation, like characters constantly interrupting each other on a real or imaginary stage. The slow movement is virtually unparalleled in the entire concerto repertoire, expressing a resigned and intense melancholy that paves the way for Romanticism while remaining within the temperate framework of Viennese Classicism and the restraint of passions – itself linked to the notion of taste, so important at the time. Despite two verses in minor, the finale closes the work in a carefree and graceful manner, with a lively rondo dominated by a playful theme.
The programme for the two evenings also provides an overview of the development of symphonic forms related to dance suites. During his period in Cöthen (1717-1723), Bach wrote four Suites, which he called Overtures in his manuscripts. The pieces were not intended to be danced to, but rather to accompany a wide variety of events: banquets, feasts, receptions for guests, court parades, theatrical performances, and orchestral concerts. Suite No. 3 reveals the adoption of French taste through its “noble” and solemn style – its decorative writing abounding in string flourishes, its glittering instrumentation with trumpets, timpani, and oboes, its rich polyphony, its use of dotted rhythms, and its typical dances, such as the gavotte and the bourrée.
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach’s Sinfonia in F major dates from his stay in Dresden in the 1730s and is constructed as a four-movement orchestral suite consisting of a “French-style” overture, an “Andante”, an “Allegro”, and a “Minuet”. The title “dissonant symphony” was not given by the composer but refers to the unusual and theatrical discordance of the opening bars. The ensemble adopts the characteristics of Empfindsamkeit already mentioned, such as violent contrasts, sudden suspensions, echo effects, rapidly repeated notes evoking storm scenes in opera, chains of dissonances in the slow movement, tense rhythms, and severe unison in the “Allegro”. The score closes with two minuets that seem to want to calm the agitated spirit of the first movements, thus offering the image of a redeemed world or proposing a false serenity that fails to make us forget the vicissitudes of existence…
Jean-François Boukobza
