Johann Sebastian Bach - booksnow.scholarsportal.info

coa'certos for the clavitlr. 139the year 1736.^''^ In Bach's later years, when he undertookthe final revision of the most important of his organ chorales,and gave the final form to the Passions according to St. Johnand St. Matthew, he also collected his clavier concertos andput the finishing touches to them.^**In Weimar, as we know. Bach had worked diligently atthe arrangement of violin concertos for the clavier ; and inLeipzig he transcribed a great number of Vivaldi's compositions.The work was identical, excepting that in theformer case the tutti parts are included in the clavierarrangement, while here the clavier part simply takes theplace of the violin. Beside the alteration of those passagesand melodic phrases which were too exclusively fitted for theviolin, and their extension to deeper registers inaccessible tothe violin, he had to add a part for the left hand. Merelyto allot the figured bass part to the clavier was a makeshift,of which indeed he availed himself frequently, especiallyin the D major concerto and in the middle movement of aconcerto in C minor. When he undertook a more thoroughremodelling he generally surrounded the figured bass withmore animated passages in the clavier bass, and sometimesintroduced an independent third part between the upper partand the figured bass, or, when the figured bass stopped,turned the one part of the solo instrument into a trio. Inthis respect the G minor, and in its last recension the Dminor, concerto underwent especially careful treatment, asf.lso the first movement of that C minor concerto whichstill exists in the original. As contrasted with stringed instruments,the peculi3rjty-_^of Jthe.„clayier is its power of playingin two parts, or even in.three or more parts. By this, as wellas by^^uality of tone^.ihe. clavier can be brought into sharpercontrast witTi'the tutti_than the_violin. Since the time ofMozart the clavier has come into more and more prominenceas the solo instrument in instrumental concertos; andnowhere is its style more purely and perfectly displayed than233 B.-G., XXI. ,2 No. 3. See Appendix A. of Vol. II.. No 44.2*1 The autograph, in the Royal Library in Berlin, contains seven of theseand also the fragment of the second D minor concerto. One of them, however^in F majori, is a Concerto grosso with clavier, of which more anon.