Skip to content
Siete qui: Home Festival Festival 2010 Bach’s and Schumann’s counterpoint
Bach’s and Schumann’s counterpoint PDF Print E-mail
The English Suites by J.S. Bach date back to Köthen’s years, very roughly between 1720 and 1722; their composition it is considered to precede the French Suites. Young Prince Leopold’s love for chamber music, orchestra and keyboard instruments are for the composer an incentive to dedicate himself to breed instruments and create the right conditions for one of the greatest moments of satisfaction of his career. The English Suites, intended for the harpsichord and not to the clavichord, with regard to the former have a more homogeneous, unitary and wide base, but above all the introductory Préludes are the most characteristic tract, owing to which they assume a magnificent dimension; these pages are considerably extensive – they are exceptionally wide in Suite III – having a form in the style of the Italian concerto grosso, even if as noted by Alberto Basso each one follows a route, a constructive process which is from time to time different. They are called English perhaps only due to the fact that they have been written for a noble Englishman, but rather certainly having a French taste insofar as its dances are concerned, replete with abundant ornamentations and flowerings, even with recourse to the doubles, or varied repetitions of the piece.
Schumann, in 1845, just out of a depression, writes about his studies for that original hybrid instrument, the pedalier piano or pedalflügel. So it is not surprising in the Sei pezzi a canone op. 56 that the first recalls a Bachian and organ style, to be immediately abandoned in the following piece, where a pathetic melody becomes protagonist, such as in the mellow and flowing Andantino in the third position, up to the last movement taking us to the elegiac song typical of Schumann.

The Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of Dawn) op. 133 see the light of day under the deep impression made by the visit Brahms pays Schumann in the autumn of 1853 and after hearing his early operas. These disturbing and mesmerising pages are concluded within a few days and constitute the last opera finished by the composer on the threshold of his madness; the cycle is dedicated «to her excellence poetess Bettina», Bettina Brentano, friend of Beethoven and Goethe, who in Brahms’ imagination is placed above Diotima, who inspired Hölderin when he was rather out of his mind. These visions lack flesh and are vague and do not describe a pale dawn, but the emotions aroused in contemplating it. The first piece, pervaded by a religious peace, has dissonant, harsh and breaking harmonies which have been compared to those of Bach, both one and the other resulting from a supreme logic of counterpoint writings. The second piece looks like a sad chorale and, deprived of the strong times, it is unsteady and breathless; the central Soul seems to be a race on an obsessive rhythm towards the abyss, followed by a wide and painful chant; finally, in conclusion is the last short composition which develops like an unnerving elaboration of a chorale up to a possibly serene but empty termination, on the edge of hypnotic dizziness, and oblivion.

Monica Rosolen