Antecedents and influences Though Bach never visited France or Italy, he was influenced by French and Italian music. He studied both dead and living composers, and those influences are evident in his music.
Italian influences including Weimar concerto transcriptions The court at Weimar was particularly interested in Italian music. Not all the music Bach was exposed to there has been identified, but Vivaldi was certainly an important influence. In particular, Bach borrowed the idea of propulsive rhythmic patterns from Vivaldi. • The musical influence for
BWV 979 has been attributed to Vivaldi and to
Giuseppe Torelli. Listed as No. 10 in the
Anhang (Appendix) of the
Ryom-Verzeichnis (RV), it was generally attributed to Torelli. In an article published in 2005, Federico Maria Sardelli argued against the attribution to Torelli in favour of an attribution to Vivaldi. Consequently, the concerto was relisted as RV 813. The composition originated before 1711: its seven movements and second viola part are not compatible with Vivaldi's later style. • No works by other composers have been identified for
BWV 977,
983, or
986. Stylistically BWV 977 is more Italianate than 983 or 986. David Schulenberg supposes an Italian origin for BWV 977 and German precedents for the other two. Bach employed other transcriptions of Vivaldi concertos, using versions of various quality that circulated as manuscripts in his time. In 2011, Joseph Butler began to try to assess the relative originality in Bach in comparison to the relative originality in Vivaldi with the result that other composers likely affected Bach while composing Vivaldi-inspired works. Butler writes: "The concertos Bach transcribed from Vivaldi's Op. 3 provide the best avenue for this study (of their comparative originality). These works are the most original of Bach's transcriptions, and they were based on outstanding originals available to Bach in an authoritative published edition. His other Vivaldi transcriptions were made from manuscript sources of varying integrity."
French influences Jean-Baptiste Lully is credited with the invention in the 1650s of the
French overture, a form used extensively in the Baroque and Classical eras, especially by Bach and Handel. The later French composer
François Couperin has been seen as an influence on the dance-based movements of Bach's keyboard suites. The influence of Lully's music produced a radical revolution in the style and composition of the
dances of the French court, which Bach made use of in his music. Instead of the slow and stately movements that had prevailed until Lully began composing, Lully introduced lively
ballets of rapid
rhythm, often based on well-known dance types such as
gavottes,
menuets,
rigaudons, and
sarabandes, forms often used by Bach.
Creative range . The note next to reads:
NB Bey einer andächtigen Musiq ist allezeit Gott mit seiner Gnaden Gegenwart; Eng. trans. "Nota bene| In a music of worship God is always present with his grace". Bach's creative range and musical style encompassed four-part harmony, modulation, ornamentation, use of continuo instruments solos, virtuoso instrumentation, counterpoint, and a refined attention to structure and lyrics. Like his contemporaries Handel, Telemann, and Vivaldi, Bach composed concertos, suites, recitatives,
da capo arias, and four-part choral music, and employed
basso continuo. Most of the prints of Bach's music that appeared during his lifetime were commissioned by the composer. His music is harmonically more innovative than his peers', employing surprisingly
dissonant chords and progressions, often extensively exploring harmonic possibilities within one piece. Bach's hundreds of sacred works are usually seen as manifesting not just his craft but also a deep faith in God. His commitment to the Lutheran faith was reflected in his teaching
Luther's Small Catechism as the in Leipzig, and some of his pieces represent it. The contents of Luther's Small Catechism contain such religious themes as the
Ten Commandments, the
Apostles' Creed, the
Lord's Prayer,
the Sacrament of Holy Baptism,
the Office of the Keys and Confession, and
the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The
Lutheran chorale was the basis of much of his work. In elaborating these hymns into his chorale preludes, he wrote more cogent and tightly integrated works than most, even when they were massive and lengthy. The large-scale structure of every major Bach sacred vocal work is evidence of subtle, elaborate planning to create religiously and musically powerful expression. Bach published or carefully compiled in manuscript many collections of pieces that explored the range of artistic and technical possibilities inherent in almost every genre of his time except
opera. For example,
The Well-Tempered Clavier comprises two books, each of which presents a prelude and fugue in every major and minor key.
Compositional style in the High Baroque Four-part harmony ": the four-part chorale setting as included in the
St Matthew Passion Four-part harmony predates Bach, but he lived during a time when
modal music in Western tradition was largely supplanted by the
tonal system. In this system a piece of music progresses from one
chord to the next according to certain rules, with each chord characterised by four notes. The principles of four-part harmony are found not only in Bach's four-part choral music; he also prescribes it for instance in
figured bass accompaniment. The new system was at the core of Bach's style. Some examples of this characteristic of Bach's style and its influence: • When in the 1740s Bach staged
his arrangement of
Pergolesi's
Stabat Mater, he upgraded the viola part (which in the original composition plays in unison with the bass part) to fill in the harmony, thus adapting the composition to four-part harmony. • When, starting in the 19th century in Russia, there was a discussion about the authenticity of four-part court chant settings compared to earlier Russian traditions,
Bach's four-part chorale settings, such as those ending his
Chorale cantatas, were considered foreign-influenced musical precedents, but such influence was deemed unavoidable. Bach's insistence on the tonal system and contribution to shaping it did not imply he was less at ease with the older modal system and the genres associated with it: more than his contemporaries (who had "moved on" to the tonal system without much exception), he often returned to the then-antiquated modes and genres. His
Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, emulating the
chromatic fantasia genre used by earlier composers such as
John Dowland and
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck in D
Dorian mode (comparable to
D minor in the tonal system), is an example. Bach's first biographer,
Johann Nikolaus Forkel, wrote of Bach's original approach to this: "I have expended much effort to find another piece of this type by Bach. But it was in vain. This fantasy is unique and has always been second to none."
Modulation Modulation, or changing
key in the course of a piece, is another style characteristic where Bach goes beyond the norm in his time. Baroque instruments vastly limited modulation possibilities: keyboard instruments, before a workable system of
temperament, limited the keys that could be modulated to, and wind instruments, especially brass instruments such as
trumpets and
horns, about a century before they were fitted with valves and
crooks, were tied to the key of their tuning. Bach pushed the limits: he added "strange tones" in his organ playing, confusing the singers, according to an indictment he had to face in Arnstadt, and
Louis Marchand, another early experimenter with modulation, seems to have avoided confrontation with Bach because the latter went further than anyone had done before. For example, in the
Suscepit Israel of his 1723 Magnificat, he used a sophisticated compositional form in which the trumpets in E-flat play a melody in unfamiliar, variable-size quarter tones in the
enharmonic scale of C minor. The major development in Bach's time to which he was a significant contributor was a temperament for keyboard instruments that allowed their use in every key (12 major and 12 minor) and modulation without retuning. His
Capriccio on the departure of a beloved brother, a very early work, showed a gusto for modulation unlike any contemporary work it has been compared to, but the full expansion came with
The Well-Tempered Clavier, using all keys, which Bach apparently had been developing since around 1720, the '''' being one of its earliest examples.
Ornamentation as contained in the
Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach '', showing Bach's use of ornaments The second page of the ''
is an ornament notation and performance guide that Bach wrote for his eldest son, then nine years old. Bach was generally quite specific on ornamentation in his compositions (in his time, much ornamentation was not written out by composers but rather considered a liberty of the performer), and his ornamentation was often quite elaborate. For instance, the "Aria" of the Goldberg Variations'' has rich ornamentation in nearly every measure. Bach's approach to ornamentation can also be seen in a keyboard arrangement he made of Marcello's
Oboe Concerto: he added explicit ornamentation, which centuries later is still played. Although Bach wrote no formal operas, he was not averse to the genre or its ornamented vocal style, as in his
Coffee Cantata. In church music, Italian composers had imitated the operatic vocal style in genres such as the
Neapolitan mass. In Protestant surroundings, there was more reluctance to adopt such a style for liturgical music. Kuhnau had notoriously shunned opera and Italian virtuoso vocal music. Bach felt differently, and a performance of his St Matthew Passion was described as sounding like opera.
Continuo instrument solos In concerted playing in Bach's time, the basso continuo, consisting of instruments such as
viola da gamba or cello, and harpsichord or organ, usually had the role of accompaniment, providing a piece's harmonic and rhythmic foundation. Beginning in the 1720s Bach had the organ play
concertante (i.e., as a soloist) with the orchestra in instrumental cantata movements, a decade before Handel published his
first organ concertos. Apart from the
fifth Brandenburg Concerto and the
Triple Concerto, which already had harpsichord soloists in the 1720s, Bach wrote and arranged his harpsichord concertos in the 1730s, and in his sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord neither instrument plays a continuo part: they are treated as equal soloists, far beyond the figured bass. In this way, Bach played a key role in the development of genres such as the keyboard concerto.
Instrumentation Bach wrote virtuoso music for specific instruments as well as music independent of instrumentation. For instance, the
Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin are considered among the finest works written for violin, within reach of only accomplished players. The music fits the instrument, using the full gamut of its possibilities and requiring virtuosity but without
bravura. In this sense, it is no surprise that Bach's music is easily and often performed on instruments it was not written for, that
it is transcribed so often, and that his melodies turn up in unexpected places, such as jazz music. Apart from this, Bach left several compositions without specified instrumentation: the canons
BWV 1072–1078 are in that category, as is the bulk of the
Musical Offering and the
Art of Fugue.
Counterpoint Another characteristic of Bach's style is his extensive use of
counterpoint, as opposed to the
homophony used in his four-part chorale settings, for example. Bach's canons, and especially his fugues, are the most characteristic of this style, which he did not invent but contributed to so fundamentally as to influence many followers. Fugues are as characteristic of Bach's style as, for instance,
sonata form is of the composers of the
Classical period. These strictly contrapuntal compositions, and most of Bach's music in general, are characterised by distinct melodic lines for each voice, where the chords formed by the notes sounding at a given point follow the rules of four-part harmony. Forkel, Bach's first biographer, gives this description of this feature of Bach's music, which sets it apart from most other music:
Structure and lyrics Bach devoted more attention than his contemporaries to the structure of his compositions. This can be seen in minor adjustments he made when adapting someone else's work, such as his earliest version of the
"Keiser" St Mark Passion, where he enhances scene transitions, and in the architecture of his own work, such as his
Magnificat The
librettos, or lyrics, of his vocal compositions played an essential role for Bach. He sought collaboration with various text authors for his cantatas and major vocal compositions, possibly writing or adapting such texts himself to make them fit the structure of the composition when he could not rely on the talents of other text authors. His collaboration with
Picander for the
St Matthew Passion libretto is best known, but there was a similar process in achieving a multi-layered structure for his
St John Passion libretto a few years earlier.
Fugue structure Among the compositional techniques Bach used, the form of the fugue recurs throughout his work; a
fugue (derived from the Latin for "flight" or "escape") is a
contrapuntal,
polyphonic compositional technique in two or more
voices, built on a
subject (a musical theme) introduced at the beginning in
imitation (repetition at different pitches), which recurs frequently throughout the composition. Most fugues open with the subject, which then sounds successively in each
voice. When each voice has completed its entry of the subject, the
exposition is complete. This is often followed by a connecting passage, or
episode, developed from previously heard material; further "entries" of the subject are then heard in
related keys. Episodes (if applicable) and entries are usually alternated until the final entry of the subject, at which point the music has returned to the opening key, or
tonic, which is often followed by a
coda. Bach was well known for his fugues and shaped his own works after those of
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck,
Johann Jakob Froberger,
Johann Pachelbel,
Girolamo Frescobaldi,
Dieterich Buxtehude and others.
Copies, arrangements, and uncertain attributions In his early youth, Bach copied pieces by other composers to learn from them. Later, he copied and arranged music for performance or as study material for his pupils. Some of these pieces, like "
Bist du bei mir" (copied not by Bach but by Anna Magdalena), became famous before being associated with Bach. Bach copied and arranged Italian masters such as Vivaldi (e.g.
BWV 1065),
Pergolesi (
BWV 1083) and
Palestrina (
Missa Sine nomine), French masters such as
François Couperin (
BWV Anh. 183), and various German masters, including Telemann (e.g.
BWV 824=
TWV 32:14) and Handel (
arias from Brockes Passion), and music by members of his own family. He also often copied and arranged his own music (e.g. movements from cantatas for his short masses
BWV 233–236), as his music was likewise copied and arranged by others. Some of these arrangements, like the late 19th-century "
Air on the G String", helped to popularise Bach's music. Who copied whom is sometimes unclear. For instance, Forkel mentions a Mass for double chorus among Bach's works. It was published and performed in the early 19th century. Although a score partially in Bach's handwriting exists, the work was later considered spurious. In 1950, the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis was designed to keep such works out of the main catalogue; if there was a strong association with Bach, they could be listed in its appendix (German:
Anhang, abbreviated as Anh.). Thus, for instance, the Mass for double chorus became
BWV Anh. 167. But this was far from the end of the attribution problems. For instance,
Schlage doch, gewünschte Stunde, BWV 53, was later attributed to
Melchior Hoffmann. For other works, Bach's authorship was put in doubt: the best-known organ composition in the BWV catalogue, the
Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, was one of these uncertain works in the late 20th century. ==Reception and legacy==