The Concerto for solo keyboard in G major No. 9 (BWV
980) is one of 16 solo adaptations of preexisting
concertos that Johann Sebastian Bach completed in
1713-1714 and one of six from that collection based on
concertos by the Italian master of the genre, Antonio
Vivaldi. Bach undertook to transcribe these concertos
during his time at Weimar and at the request of Prince
Johann Ernst. Ernst had recently returned from his
university studies in Holland, where he had encountered
printed editions of th...(+)
The Concerto for solo keyboard in G major No. 9 (BWV
980) is one of 16 solo adaptations of preexisting
concertos that Johann Sebastian Bach completed in
1713-1714 and one of six from that collection based on
concertos by the Italian master of the genre, Antonio
Vivaldi. Bach undertook to transcribe these concertos
during his time at Weimar and at the request of Prince
Johann Ernst. Ernst had recently returned from his
university studies in Holland, where he had encountered
printed editions of the works of Vivaldi (whose Op. 3
collection, L'estro armonico, was published in
Amsterdam in 1711) and had heard, in the Nieuwe Kerk in
Amsterdam, the organist Jan Jacob de Graaf performing
his own organ realizations of Italian concertos.
Bach adapted the Concerto No. 9 from Vivaldi's Violin
Concerto in B flat major (RV 381), Op. 4/1. The
original concerto appeared in the collection La
stravaganza, which was published in Amsterdam, but not
until 1716; thus, Ernst must have gone to the trouble
of procuring a manuscript copy of Vivaldi's original
(as he likewise would have done in the cases of Bach's
concertos BWV 973 and 975, also based on Vivaldi pieces
then unpublished). In fact, the version Bach used and
the one that appeared later in La stravaganza differ
somewhat in their musical content.
The idiomatic nature of each of the concertos in the
series (most of them originally for violin) raises its
own set of issues when realized on the keyboard, and
one might argue that the Solo Concerto No. 9 loses some
of its energy in the translation. After all, the
incessant arpeggiations on straightforward G major
chord progressions that dominate the first movement
might have more of an urgent, bodily quality to them
when associated with the see-saw motions of the violin
bow. On the other hand, the less physical keyboard
gestures lend the texture a more hypnotic feel, setting
in greater relief the moments in the movement's later
tutti sections where the harmony veers off on
unexpected detours. The same quality permeates the
Largo second movement, with its long stretches of
repeated figurations over Spartan harmonic progressions
in B minor and its bare bass line ending. Figural
repetition in the Allegro third movement is motoric
rather than hypnotic, proceeding through a series of
progressions and sequences along an uninterrupted
stream of eighth note arpeggios, its harmonic contours
underscored by tumbling scalar runs.
Source: AllMusic
(http://www.allmusic.com/composition/concerto-for-solo-
keyboard-no-9-in-g-major-after-vivaldi-op-4-1-rv-381-bw
v-980-bc-l192-mc0002379537).
Although originally written for Harpsichord. I created
this Arrangement of the Concerto in G Major (BWV 980)
for Classical Guitar Duet.
PARTITION