Johann Sebastian Bach

Bach sent these six concertos to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg, in 1721. Each uses a different instrumental combination, making the group a survey of ensemble possibilities rather than six versions of the...

Bach gives the two solo violins closely interwoven parts rather than separating them into a leader and an accompanist. The slow movement is especially distinctive: one violin begins a long melody that the other takes...

An aria frames thirty variations that explore changing meters, textures, and contrapuntal techniques. Rather than simply decorating the melody, Bach repeatedly reworks its underlying harmonic plan. The original...

Bach's Mass in B Minor gathers music from different stages of his career into a setting of the Latin Mass. The Kyrie and Gloria existed earlier, and several later sections adapt music first heard in other contexts....

Bach's six cello suites develop dance forms into substantial unaccompanied instrumental works. A prelude leads into a sequence of dances whose contrasting rhythms provide different kinds of movement. The instrument...

Bach's St Matthew Passion combines the Gospel account of Jesus's suffering with reflective arias, chorales, and large choral movements. The Evangelist narrates while other singers take dramatic roles. Two choral and...

The Art of Fugue explores what can be made from a concentrated musical subject through fugues and canons. Bach transforms the material by inversion, augmentation, and combinations of independent lines. The surviving...

The two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier each pair a prelude and fugue in every major and minor key. Bach uses the format to explore remarkably different keyboard textures, from flowing patterns to dense imitative...

A free, theatrical toccata leads into a more continuously moving fugue in this familiar organ work. The opening depends as much on pauses and resonance as on its descending flourishes. Bach's autograph is lost, and...

The A-minor concerto places the violin's flowing solo lines within compact, recurring orchestral structures. Its central movement rests on a persistent bass pattern while the soloist develops a more expansive melody...

Bach's E-major concerto gives the opening triad a conspicuous role in a bright exchange between solo violin and ensemble. A slower central movement unfolds over a repeated bass idea, allowing the solo line to become...