Suite No. 2 in B minor, BWV 1067
The source is a partially autograph set of parts (Bach wrote out those for flute and viola) from Leipzig in 1738–39. The
Badinerie (literally "jesting" in French – in other works Bach used the Italian word with the same meaning,
scherzo) has become a showpiece for solo flautists because of its quick pace and difficulty. For many years in the 1980s and early 1990s the movement was the incidental music for
ITV Schools morning programmes in the UK.
Earlier version in A minor Joshua Rifkin has argued, based on in-depth analysis of the partially autograph primary sources, that this work is based on an earlier version in A minor in which the solo flute part was scored instead for solo violin. Rifkin demonstrates that notational errors in the surviving parts can best be explained by their having been copied from a model a whole tone lower, and that this solo part would venture below the lowest pitches on the flutes Bach wrote for (the
transverse flute, which Bach called
flauto traverso or
flute traversière). Rifkin argues that the violin was the most likely option, noting that in writing the word "Traversiere" in the solo part, Bach seems to have fashioned the letter T out of an earlier "V", suggesting that he originally intended to write the word "violin" (the page in question can be viewed here, p. 6). Further, Rifkin notes passages that would have used the violinistic technique of
bariolage. Rifkin also suggests that Bach was inspired to write the suite by a similar work by his second cousin
Johann Bernhard Bach. Flautist Steven Zohn accepts the argument of an earlier version in A minor, but suggests that the original part may have been playable on flute as well as violin. Oboist
Gonzalo X. Ruiz has argued in detail that the solo instrument in the lost original A minor version was the oboe, and he has recorded it in his own reconstruction of that putative original on a baroque oboe. His case against the violin is that: the range is "curiously limited" for that instrument, "avoiding the G string almost entirely," and that the supposed violin solo would at times be lower in pitch than the first violin part, something that is almost unheard of in dedicated violin concertos. By contrast, "the range is exactly the range of Bach's oboes"; scoring the solo oboe occasionally lower than the first violin was typical Baroque practice, as the oboe still comes through to the ear; and the "figurations are very similar to those found in many oboe works of the period." ==Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068==