You know, there's this really comforting idea
that classical music is somehow fixed, carved
in marble. Right. You go to a concert, you open
the program and it says Bach, orchestral suite
number three. And you just assume that's it.
That's exactly what he wrote, what he called
it. It's a very stabilizing thought, isn't it?
Yeah. That there's a definitive version of these
masterpieces just sitting in a vault somewhere.
Yeah. But when it comes to Johann Sebastian Bach.
and specifically these famous orchestral suites,
that marble is actually, well, it's more like
wet clay. That is exactly what we're unpacking
today. We're looking at four of the most famous
works in the Baroque repertoire. I mean, we're
talking about music that includes the air on
the G string and the batonry. Household names,
really. And we're going to find out that almost
everything we think we know about them might
just be wrong. Oh, absolutely. Wrong names, quite
possibly the wrong instruments, and in some cases...
entirely different purposes than what we hear
today. So for this deep dive, we've got a stack
of research here. We're talking manuscript analysis
from scholars like Joshua Rifkin, historical
context, all of it. We're going to peel back
those layers. And I think the very first layer
we have to chip away at is the name itself. Okay.
Because if you had walked up to Bach in Leipzig,
say around 1730, and asked to hear his orchestral
suite, he probably would have just looked at
you with total confusion. He didn't use the word
suite at all. No, not for these. Yeah. In the
manuscripts, Bach labeled these works as overtures.
Which is confusing for a modern listener, because
when I think overture, I think of, you know,
the intro to an opera, the curtain raiser. Exactly.
And that's one meaning. But in Baroque Germany...
The word had this kind of dual meaning. It was
almost like a part that stands for the whole.
So how does one movement end up being the name
for the whole collection? Well, the first movement
of all these pieces was in a very specific style
called a French overture. It has a really rigid
form. It always starts with a slow, majestic
section. Lots of dotted rhythms. You know that
sound. It's very jagged and regal. Right. Very
precise. Almost jerky. Yes. Then it just bursts
into this. fast fugal section where all the instruments
are kind of chasing each other. And then finally
it comes back to that slow majesty at the end.
So that first huge movement is the ouverture.
Right. But because that opening movement was
so massive, I mean, it's usually the longest
and most complex piece by far, the Germans just
started calling the entire collection of dances
that followed it an ouverture as well. Huh. So
it's like calling an entire album track one just
because the first song is 10 minutes long. That's
a great way to put it. It was shorthand, really.
It signaled to the audience, this is a big collection
of dances in the prestigious French style. And
that French label was a big deal at the time.
Oh, huge. French culture was the absolute height
of sophistication in Germany. If you were writing
music in the French style, you were signaling
that you were cosmopolitan, that you were elite.
So Bach was being trendy. He was definitely tapping
into a very popular genre. But here's the thing
that really jumped out at me from the research.
We only have four of these from Bach. Just four.
That feels surprisingly low. We always think
of Bach as this machine who wrote a cantata every
week for years. He was prolific, for sure. But
in this specific genre, he's a statistical anomaly.
I mean, look at his contemporary, Georg Philip
Tellemann. Who was arguably more famous than
Bach back then. Absolutely. And Tellemann left
us about 135 of these suites. 135. And scholars
think he wrote vastly more that have been lost.
Christoph Graupner left 85. Johann Friedrich
Fasch left nearly 100. So Bach's four. They're
rare birds. Do we have any idea why? Was he just
not that into them? Well, Bach was almost always
writing for a specific job. He wrote church music
for the church, keyboard music for teaching.
These suites likely didn't fit his day -to -day
work as neatly as they did for someone like Telemann,
who was running public concerts. So they weren't
written as a set then. Right. That's a big misconception,
isn't it? We buy the CD, the orchestral suites.
And assume he wrote them one through four, like
he did with the Brandenburg Concerto. Exactly.
But the Brandenburgs were a single collection,
basically a job application. These four suites
are from completely different years, roughly
1724 to 1731. Different instruments, probably
for different groups. We just lump them together
because, you know, it's convenient for recording.
Okay, so let's zoom in on the most famous one,
suite number three in D major. This is the big
one. Trumpets, drums. It's got that huge celebratory
energy. And of course, it contains the second
movement that literally everyone on the planet
knows. The air. The air and the G string. Right.
And this is a classic deep dive fact, but it's
so important. Bach never, ever called it that.
No, that title is a ghost from the future. It
comes from the late 19th century, well over 100
years after Bach died. A German violinist named
August Wilhelm decided to arrange the movement.
And just to show off, he transposed it down a
step so he could play the entire melody on just
one string of the violin. The lowest string,
the G string. It gives it this incredibly rich,
throaty, romantic sound. And that, well, that
remix, if you want to call it that, became so
famous it totally eclipsed the original. It's
wild because in Bach's version... The melody
is woven into the first violins. It's much lighter.
It floats. It's far more transparent. But, you
know, there's actually a bigger controversy with
suite number three than just the name of the
slow movement. This is where we get into the
heavy scholarship. This is where we get into
Joshua Rifkin's theory. Right. So Rifkin is a
brilliant and sometimes controversial musicologist.
And he looked at the original sources for suite
number three and noticed something odd. The physical
paper. The parts from the 1730s, they're a patchwork.
A patchwork? How? Well, you have some parts there
in Bach's own handwriting, specifically the first
violin and the continuo. And the continuo is
the bass line, right? Cello and harpsichord,
usually. Exactly. The rhythm section. So Bach
wrote those parts himself. But then the trumpet,
the timpani, and the oboe parts, they were copied
out by his son, C .P .E. Bach. And the other
string parts were copied by a student. Okay.
So what does that suggest? Rifkin argues that
this separation means the piece wasn't originally
for a full orchestra at all. So what was it then?
He thinks the original version was for strings
only. No trumpets, no drums. That completely
changes the feeling of the piece. We think of
number three as this pompous military entrance
of the king kind of music. And Rifkin is saying
that entire layer might just be an afterthought.
That Bach took an existing string piece and just
dressed it up later for a special occasion. If
you strip it back, It becomes much more intimate.
It's like finding out a heavy metal song started
its life as an acoustic ballad. That is a perfect
analogy. And we see this pattern of retrofitting
music even more clearly in the other D major
suite, number four. The other big one with the
trumpets. Yes. And in this case, the evidence
for him recycling the music is undeniable. Bach
actually took the first movement of suite number
four. and turned it into the opening chorus of
Christmas cantata. Cantata 110. Unser Mund sei
voll Lachens. Our mouths be full of laughter.
A fitting text for Christmas. It's incredibly
joyous. And to match that text, Bach added a
full choir, trumpets, and drums. So Rifkin argues
that the orchestral suite version we know today
might actually be what we'd call a backport.
Bach liked the Christmas version so much, he
decided to update the instrumental suite to match
it. So the original might have been strings,
then he makes the cantata with drums, and then
he goes back and adds the drums to the suite.
Very likely. And it just shows that for Bach,
a piece of music wasn't some finished monument.
It was. It was functional material. You could
expand it, contract it, repaint it, depending
on the occasion. Which brings us to the biggest
mystery of all. Suite number two in B minor.
Ah, the flute suite. Or so we think. This is
the one that ends with the Badenery. Which I
should say for any of our listeners in the UK
might trigger some deep -seated nostalgia. Right.
It was the theme music for ITV school's morning
programs in the 80s and 90s. Instantly recognizable.
Nothing says Baroque masterpiece like waiting
for a science documentary to start in middle
school. But The Badinery is famous for being
a flute showpiece. It's incredibly fast. It is.
The word itself means jesting or joking. It's
a sprint. But here's the twist. There's a very
strong school of thought that says this music
was not written for the flute at all. This is
one of my favorite debates in all of musicology.
It's like musical forensics. Okay, lay it out
for us. The manuscript we have is from around
1738. But there are clues on the page, literal
graphical clues, that suggest Bach was copying
from an older document. And the smoking gun is
a typo? A typo, or maybe a correction. On the
title page, where Bach writes the word traversier,
which means transverse flute, it looks suspiciously
like he wrote the letter T over an existing letter
V. V4 violin. That's the theory. That he started
to write violino, realized he was making a flute
version this time, and corrected himself. Okay,
but a typo is one thing. Is there any actual
musical evidence? There is. A lot of it. First,
the key. The suite is in B minor, which is a
bit awkward for a broke flute. But if you transpose
it down to A minor, it fits the violin perfectly.
And more importantly... There are techniques
in the music that just scream violin. You're
talking about bariolage. Exactly. Bariolage is
a French term for a bowing technique, where you
rapidly alternate between a static note on an
open string and a moving melody on another string.
For a violinist, it's a very natural rocking
motion. Like patting your head and rubbing your
stomach, but with a bow? Yes. And on a violin,
it sounds brilliant because that open string
rings out with a lot of resonance. On a flute?
It's incredibly awkward. You have to jump these
wide intervals with your breath and it just,
it sounds breathless, not resonant. So Rifkin's
theory is that this was originally a lost violin
concerto in A minor. That's the leading theory,
yes. But the plot thickens. Because another musician,
the brilliant oboist, Gonzalo X Ruiz, has looked
at all the same evidence and said, I don't think
it's violin either. I think it's oboe. Oboe!
Why oboe? Ruiz points out the range. If this
were a violin piece, you would absolutely expect
the soloist to use the G string, the lowest,
richest string. But the music, it curiously avoids
that entire low register. I see. It stays in
a range that perfectly matches the Baroque oboe.
And Ruiz argues that the figuration, the specific
shape of the fast notes, looks exactly like the
writing in Bach's other oboe works. This is amazing.
So when we hear a flautist struggling through
the botanury, we might be watching them play
a translation of a translation. And yet it works.
That's the genius of it. Even if it was originally
for violin or oboe, the flute version is spectacular.
It has this fragile, breathless quality that
really suits that jesting character. There is
a middle ground here, too, isn't there? The flautist
Stephen Zahn has an idea. Right. He's the diplomat
in this argument. He suggests that the original
A minor version might have been... generic enough
to be played by either a violin or a flute from
the very beginning. A sort of choose -your -own
-adventure solo part. You've covered suites two,
three, and four. What about number one in C major?
Is it just as controversial? It's actually the
most stable of the bunch. It's scored for woodwinds
and strings, no trumpets, and it feels the most
authentically French. It's like a sampler platter
of French dances. You get a four -lane, a javotte,
a passe -pie. So it's the most straightforward.
If you want to know what this overture genre
was supposed to sound like to a German audience
in the 1720s, I'd say start with number one.
But even if the original is stable, the life
of these pieces after Bach died was anything
but. We mentioned Wilhelm Schur and his air on
the G string, but it wasn't just him. No, not
at all. The Romantics loved this music, but they
felt the orchestration was too thin for their
huge concert halls. Gustav Mahler, of all people,
arranged suites two and three. Mahler editing
Bach. That feels a bit sacrilegious to modern
ears. To us, maybe. But to him, he was bringing
Bach into the modern age. He even combined movements
from the different suites to create a new super
suite. And here's my favorite image. When Mahler
toured with the New York Philharmonic, he would
conduct these arrangements from the keyboard.
Mahler on a harpsichord. Yes. But in true Mahler
fashion, he reportedly played the continual part
with such ferocity that he was basically conducting
the entire orchestra with his chords. Wow. And
then you have composers like Giuseppe Martucci
in Italy turning them into solo piano pieces.
Which just proves the durability of the musical
ideas, right? You can play them with a massive
Mahler orchestra, strip them down to a single
piano, play the flute part on an oboe. The core
logic of the music holds up. It really challenges
this modern idea of the definitive recording.
Completely. We're obsessed with authenticity
today. We want to hear exactly what Bach heard.
But what this deep dive really shows is that
even Bach didn't just hear one thing. He heard
strings. Then he heard trumpets. He heard a violin.
Then he heard a flute. The music was alive. It's
like these manuscripts are just snapshots of
a moving target. That's a beautiful way to put
it. They're freeze frames of a process. So here's
a thought to leave you with. We revere these
four suites as these great pillars of the orchestral
repertoire. But if Bach was an outlier who only
wrote four while Telemann was writing over 100,
and if the most famous flute solo might have
been for a violin, and the most famous orchestral
error was originally for a chamber group. Then
you have to ask yourself, are we loving Bach?
Or are we loving the specific accidents of history
that allowed these particular versions to survive
on paper? If a fire had happened in a different
library in 1750, our entire concept of the perfect
orchestral suite could be completely different.
It almost certainly would be. Thanks for listening
to this deep dive. Go listen to the suites again
and see if you can hear the ghost of the violin
in that flute solo. Enjoy the music.