The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Johann Sebastian Bach · six concertos, BWV 1046 to 1051, scored here as one set, in the order of Bach’s fair copy · nineteen movements, each concerto for a different group of soloists · dedicated at Köthen on 24 March 1721 to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt · about ninety to a hundred minutes in performance
Mode
Concerto: the Italian ritornello form carrying German counterpoint and fugue, with dances in the first concerto and a cadenza in the fifth
Mythos
The hunt in the horns; the court in the dances; Echo named in the flutes of the fourth; ranks of instruments given and denied the lead
Phase
Six concertos in the order of the fair copy, two in F, two in G, then D and B flat; four movements in the first, three in each of the others
Presentation
Concert music; six concertos for six different groups, from twelve parts to seven, collected in a presentation copy in the composer’s hand
Register
Mostly brilliance, play and joy, with five slow movements that turn to lament and close song, and in the third concerto a slow movement of two chords
Scale
A court and its society of players; nineteen movements and about ninety to a hundred minutes
Governing Proposition
Six concertos, each for a different company of instruments and none repeated, are copied fair for a prince: hunting horns with oboes and a small violin, a high trumpet among a recorder, an oboe and a violin, nine strings with no soloist, a violin with two echo flutes, a harpsichord that leaves the continuo to take a movement for itself, and a band of violas and gambas with no violins. The wager of the set is that the concerto is a principle and not a scoring, and that any assembly of ranks can bear its law.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
At Köthen, on 24 March 1721, Bach dated a dedication in French to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt, and sent with it a fair copy in his own hand of six concertos, titled in French, six concerts “avec plusieurs instruments”: with several instruments. The name by which the set is known was given in the nineteenth century, not by Bach. The six are BWV 1046 to 1051, nineteen movements in all, and the desk scores them as one work, in the order of the fair copy, as Bach assembled them.
The set is a compilation. Several of its movements were composed earlier, at Weimar or at Köthen, and two earlier forms survive or are inferred: a Sinfonia, BWV 1046a, behind the first concerto, and an early form of the fifth, BWV 1050a, with a much shorter cadenza. They show how the set was made; they are not the object. Bach chose, revised and copied fair, and the cadenza of the fifth concerto was rewritten at length for this copy. No performance and no single concerto is the unit.
The keys run F, F, G, G, D and B flat: a pair in F, a pair in G, then two keys alone. It is a collection’s order, not an argument’s. Counted by part, the set thins as it goes, from twelve parts in the first concerto to nine, ten, nine, and seven in each of the last two, from the largest band to the smallest. Every concerto has a different group of soloists, and none repeats another. Across the six, nineteen different instruments are named.
Movement II
The first concerto opens with two hunting horns, three oboes, a bassoon and a violino piccolo over strings and continuo, twelve parts, the largest band in the set. The horns enter in rhythms of their own against the band: the court’s pastime brought into the concert room, and the most particular image in the work. It summons a scene. The oboe’s lament in the Adagio, over the strings, is the first slow music of the set and among its most beautiful.
It is the only concerto in four movements. After the second Allegro comes a Menuet, with a first Trio, a Polacca for strings and a second Trio, the Menuet returning between them: a sequence of dances closer to a suite than to a concerto. It is skilled and it is routine beside the rest, and it could go with less loss than any other stretch of the set. Its Polacca and the canon that opens the sixth concerto are the set’s two most distant points, and the one law holds them both, the dance less plainly.
The second concerto sets four soloists as equals: a trumpet, a recorder, an oboe and a violin. The trumpet, the prince’s instrument, enters high above the band, at the top of its range, and the recorder, the softest of the four, is given the same material. In the outer movements it is hard to hear against the trumpet in any performance; the balance is the set’s plainest fault. In the Andante, in D minor, the trumpet falls silent, and recorder, oboe and violin sing over a walking bass. The finale is fugal.
Movement III
The third concerto has no soloists. Three violins, three violas and three cellos, with continuo, stand in three equal groups of three, and the first movement passes one figure through the nine parts, which never thicken. No part could go. The ritornello, which elsewhere sets a soloist against a band, becomes here the passing of one figure through a body. It is the set’s plainest statement that the concerto is a principle and not a scoring: a commonwealth of nine, and no voice above the others.
Its slow movement is two chords: an Adagio that is a Phrygian half close, in E minor, between the two Allegros. What, if anything, should be played around them is unsettled, and every performance answers it differently. It is either the purest necessity in the set or a space left empty, and the score does not say which. The finale returns to the nine, and to joy.
The fourth concerto sets a solo violin with two flutes named “fiauti d’echo”, over strings and continuo. What those instruments were, and what the echo means, is unsettled. The violin’s part in the first movement has runs of very fast notes at the edge of the instrument’s means. The Presto opens as a fugue for the band. Echo is named in the score and evoked, lightly, by the flutes: one of the few figures the set summons, and like the horns of the first concerto, it is not built into a form.
Movement IV
The fifth concerto is for a flute, a violin and the harpsichord, over strings and continuo, seven parts in all. In every other concerto the harpsichord plays the continuo, the accompaniment beneath the soloists. Here it joins them, and at the end of the first movement it plays alone, a long cadenza that builds over its length to a climax of scales and repeated figures with no precedent in the set. The servant of every other concerto takes the movement for itself.
The earlier form of the concerto had a much shorter cadenza; the long one was written for the fair copy. It is the point of the concerto, not a decoration on it, and the concerto has the largest single share of the set’s time, about a fifth, much of it in this movement. The keyboard concerto is widely said to begin here in germ. The social reading of the set, that instruments of different ranks are given and denied the lead, rests most on this movement, and Susan McClary’s essay of 1987 made it a test case. That reading is contested; the facts it rests on are in the score.
The Affettuoso is a trio in B minor for flute, violin and harpsichord alone, the band silent. With the slow movement of the sixth concerto, it is where the set rises highest, by beauty and not by brilliance: three voices alone in a minor key, the concerto’s lament. The finale returns to the band. The set has here its largest swerve from the Italian concerto it inherits: the continuo instrument made a soloist, the accompanist let out, and a form invented to let it out.
Movement V
The sixth concerto has no violins. Two viole da braccio, two viole da gamba, a cello, a violone and the harpsichord make seven parts, the smallest band in the set. At the opening the two violas lead in close canon, a beat apart, so that following is the material; the gambas, the older and courtly instruments, are given simpler parts. In the Adagio ma non tanto the gambas are silent, and the violas draw long imitative lines over cello and continuo. The sound is dark and close, and here the set rises as high as it goes.
There is no record that the Margrave had the concertos played. The set lay unpublished and, as far as is known, unheard for more than a century, and regular performance belongs to the twentieth century. Since then it has been in the repertory of every chamber orchestra and period band, and it has been recorded complete many times over. The first movement of the second concerto was placed on the Voyager Golden Record in 1977 and sent into space.
Philipp Spitta studied the set in his life of Bach, 1873 to 1880; Malcolm Boyd wrote a monograph on it in 1993, and Michael Marissen a study of its social and religious designs in 1995. In performance it became a proving ground for the questions that changed how Baroque music is played: one player to a part or a band; what the echo flutes were; whether the trumpet part of the second concerto can be played as written on a natural trumpet; what belongs to the two chords of the third; how fast. It remains what Bach copied fair in 1721: six companies of instruments, and one law of contest and cooperation that each of them obeys.
Act III · The Twelve
Inside each concerto the subtractive test meets resistance. The first movement of No. 3 is one figure passed among nine parts, and none could go; the opening canon of No. 6 is its whole argument; the harpsichord’s cadenza in No. 5 is the point of the concerto and not an ornament on it. The test finds give in three places. The order, two in F, two in G, then D and B flat, is a collection’s order: remove a concerto and the set is smaller, not broken. No. 1’s dances could go with less loss than any other stretch. And the two chords of No. 3’s Adagio are either the purest necessity in the set or a space left empty.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Disclosure through sound is credited in full, and one disclosure can be stated: an order is a society of unequal ranks, and in music any rank can be given the lead without the order breaking. The trumpet plays as one of four equals with the recorder; the harpsichord, the servant of every other concerto, takes a movement of No. 5 for itself; the violas lead No. 6 and the gambas follow, with no violins; No. 3 is a commonwealth of nine. These are facts of the score. What holds the axis below the gate is that most of the set’s time renders joy and brilliance, a condition more than a meaning, and that the step from these facts to a claim about rank is the listener’s, and contested.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Height comes often. The sublime of brilliance: the trumpet of No. 2 entering at the top of its range, the violin’s runs in No. 4, the cadenza of No. 5. The sublime of beauty, where the set rises highest: the Affettuoso of No. 5, a trio in B minor; the Adagio ma non tanto of No. 6, the violas’ long imitative lines; the Andante of No. 2, three soloists in D minor over a walking bass; the oboe’s lament in No. 1. Held below the summit because there is no terror and almost no grandeur, and the fast movements, a large share of the time, are energy and delight more than elevation.
Score: 8.8 / 10
The rubric does not adjust for a form’s limits. The set evokes: the hunt, in the horns of No. 1, the court’s pastime set loose against the band; Echo, in the “fiauti d’echo” of No. 4, whose meaning is unsettled; the court, in No. 1’s dances; and, if the ranks are read, the social body. None of it is built. No figure, passage or return bears weight as archetype across the six, which form no journey, cycle or contest. The horns are the most particular image in the work, and they summon a scene, not a myth. Myth is evoked lightly and in places, below Kind of Blue at 8.2, which builds a call and response into its form.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The inheritance is the Italian concerto, Corelli, Torelli and above all Vivaldi’s ritornello form, which Bach had learnt by transcribing it at Weimar, and the German ensemble sonata. The departures: six concertos with six groups of soloists, none repeated, where a set of the day kept one scoring; the continuo harpsichord made a soloist, with a cadenza that takes over a movement; a concerto without violins and one for nine equal strings with no soloist; a trumpet set as an equal with a recorder, and hunting horns in a concerto. What holds the axis at the gate is the stake: a presentation copy for a prince, made largely of music Bach had already written, risked little. The turn is large; the cost was small.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Change the form and the set loses much of what it knows: that the concerto, the contest and cooperation of voices, is a principle and not a scoring. That needs six different groups. One concerto could show a solo against a band; only the set shows that any assembly of ranks can bear the same law. Within each, form follows forces: three groups of three make the ritornello a passing of one figure through a body, the cadenza of No. 5 is a form that lets the accompanist out, and the canon of No. 6 makes following the material. Held below the single designs of the concert desk because the order is a collection’s and No. 1’s dances stand outside the concerto principle.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Evidence, not promise, and over a century of it. In print: Philipp Spitta’s study of 1873 to 1880, Malcolm Boyd’s monograph of 1993, Michael Marissen’s book of 1995 on the set’s social and religious designs, and Susan McClary’s essay of 1987 on No. 5 and its harpsichord, which made the set a test case for reading social meaning in instrumental music. In performance the questions stay open and have changed how the Baroque is played: one player to a part or a band; what the echo flutes were; whether No. 2’s trumpet part is playable on a natural trumpet as written; what to do with No. 3’s two chords; tempo. Held below the top because the depth is largely formal and performative.
Score: 9.0 / 10
The intrinsic force is high: the set showed that the Italian concerto could hold any combination of voices and the full weight of German counterpoint, and in No. 5 it made the keyboard a soloist, a real reorganisation of possibility. Delayed influence is credited and discounted. The set lay unpublished and, as far as is known, unplayed for more than a century, so it redirected nothing in its own decade, and the keyboard concerto that followed came through Bach’s Leipzig harpsichord concertos and his sons, not through this manuscript. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the reach is of the twentieth century, through neoclassicism and above all the historical-performance movement, for which the set became a standard proving ground.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Survival is weighed in form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the text survives in Bach’s own fair copy, with nothing lost and no doubtful movement in the set as dedicated. The charge is in presence. After 1721 there is no record that the concertos were played, and the manuscript lay unheard for well over a century; regular performance belongs to the twentieth. Since then presence is as wide as concert music has: in the repertory of every chamber orchestra and period band, recorded complete many times over, and sent into space on the Voyager record. The fabric carries a small charge: the gamba, the natural trumpet and the echo flute are partly obsolete, and every performance must answer for them.
Score: 9.2 / 10
The making bears weight throughout. Counterpoint stays clear in textures of up to twelve parts, and the nine equal strings of No. 3 never thicken. Each instrument is written at the edge of its means: the trumpet’s high register in No. 2, the violin of No. 4, the harpsichord’s cadenza in No. 5. Ritornello form is handled six ways, never the same. Balance is solved by scoring: in No. 2’s Andante the trumpet stops so that the recorder can be heard, and in No. 6’s Adagio the gambas stop. The costs are two: in the outer movements of No. 2 the recorder set against the trumpet is hard to hear in any performance, and No. 1’s dances are skilled but routine beside the rest.
Score: 9.5 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the Polacca of No. 1, a court dance for strings inside a suite, and the opening canon of No. 6 for two violas, dark and close. One law governs both, the law of concertare, voices set against and with one another inside the ritornello’s return, and both obey it, the canon more plainly than the dance. The range is wide: twelve parts to seven, a dance suite to a fugue, a cadenza to two chords. The law holds by principle more than by material. The six share no themes and the key plan is a collection’s; the set is governed by one idea, not by one physics of motive and key. No. 1’s dances bend the law furthest.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The rubric does not adjust for a form’s limits, and the figure says how many orders the set holds. It holds the social order in miniature but integrated, as ranks of instruments given and denied the lead; the court, in its dances and its princely instruments; the hunt and the outdoors, in the horns and perhaps the echo flutes; play and contest everywhere. Consciousness enters only in the slow movements, and briefly. What holds the axis here is absence: the sacred, the family, labour, the state as such and history do not appear, and the natural order is glimpsed. Ninety-odd minutes of instrumental music hold a court and its society of players, and no more.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.5 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 9.5, then The Imperishable at 9.2 and The Bottomless Well at 9.0. Counterpoint clear in twelve parts and in nine equal strings, each instrument written at the edge of its means and balance solved by scoring; a text whole in the composer’s fair copy, in the repertory of every chamber orchestra and period band after a long silence; and a century of study and performance in which the set’s questions stay open.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.0: the set holds a court, its society of players, the hunt and play, with consciousness in the slow movements only, while the sacred, the family, labour, the state and history are absent. Next above it, The Archetypal Deep at 7.6: the hunt, the court and Echo are evoked in places, and no figure or return is built to bear weight across the six concertos.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.4 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Made at 9.5, The Living Form at 8.6, The Inner Law at 8.6, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 9.2 clears the bar of 8.5 and The Swerve clears it at 8.6, by a tenth, but Pressure on Tradition at 8.4 and The Unconcealment at 8.3 fall short, and The Archetypal Deep at 7.6 falls short by nine tenths. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.6, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.0. Four of the five summit conditions are met, and with the Epochal Gate unmet and an aggregate of 8.5 the work stands in Tier IV.
Basis · the six concertos BWV 1046 to 1051 as Bach collected them in his fair copy, dedicated at Köthen on 24 March 1721 to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt, and their performance tradition, read from knowledge under the desk’s convention for concert music; no score, edition or recording was in hand. The set is scored as one work, nineteen movements in the order of the fair copy; no single concerto is scored apart, and no performance or recording is the object. The earlier forms, the Sinfonia BWV 1046a and the early version of the fifth concerto, BWV 1050a, are evidence of how the set was made, not part of the unit. There are no words in the work. The title and the dedication are in French and are paratext; three words of the title and the score’s name for the echo flutes are the only words quoted, and every English gloss is the desk’s own. The keys, movements and parts of each concerto were counted by script. Details that could not be verified are not given, among them who first used the name, the length of the cadenza in bars, the dating of most concertos, which instrument the prince played, the manuscript’s history after the Margrave, the edition and year of first publication, the dates of particular recordings and the model of any later work; the social reading of the set is stated as contested. The running time is a range across the recorded tradition, not a measurement, and the sound of the work as heard is beyond this reading and is neither credited nor charged.