The Green caldron - University Library

20
The Green Caldron
With his last movement, a gigue. Bach returns to the suite of French
style. He does so, however, in name only. Although the gigue w^as always
a fast, lively dance, the French and Italians developed it along different
lines. The French preferred a fugal form which was imposing as well as
fast, while the Italians retained their monophonic or single melody theory
and produced gigas which were light and free. Bach's final dance is of the
giga type, being a study in the constant triplet motion of a single melodic
line.-^^
The musical forms used in Bach's Third Suite are indeed fusions of the
three prevalent instrumental styles of the baroque period. The French-Italian
overture, the Italian-German air, the French galanteries, and the Italian
gigue—all enhanced by the strong German harmonic tradition—are all
supreme examples of their particular forms. There is, however, one other
characteristic of the music which indicates its international nature. This
characteristic is ornamentation.
Baroque music abounded with ornaments. These were the various
musical embellishments with which the composers decorated their simple
melodic lines. According to Couperin, the greatest of the French harpsi-
chordists, ornaments were needed because the tone of the harpsichord
could not be changed. Instead of being struck like the wires of the piano, the
harpsichord's strings were mechanically plucked. The tone, therefore, never
varied in volume or duration. Couperin stated that various ornaments were
needed to compensate for this defect. For example, the trill or rapid alterna-
tion between two notes was needed to produce a continuous sound.^^ This
explanation may account for the necessity of ornamentation in music of the
keyboard, but every type of musical expression of the baroque era was
covered with trills and other ornaments. Perhaps the spirit of the age, which
produced such ornate forms in the other arts, is the cause of the excessive
embellishment of the music of the baroque.
The assignment of different ornaments to various national styles is
very difficult and often misleading. The fact does remain, however, that some
forms probably were put to more use by one particular national group than
by other such groups. Interestingly, the ornaments Bach uses in his Third
Suite follow fairly closely the national styles of the movements as outlined
above. The principal ornaments used in the overture (besides the trill,
which was universal) are the mordent, the undotted slide, and the initial
appoggiatura. The first two were probably of French origin, while the last
is Italian. The predominantly French overture, therefore, contains pre-
dominantly French ornamentation. In fact, the subject upon which the fugal
fast section is built is composed of a succession of undotted slides. The air,
on the other hand, contains more than twice as many initial appoggiaturas
as the overture and in addition also includes turns and dotted slides among
its ornaments. These two new ornaments were probably Italian, as is the