How to Play Bach's French Suites - Sarabande of the 5th Suite

Hi and welcome to virtualsheetmusic.com. I'm Robert Estrin in a continuing series on how to approach Bach Fifth French Suite in G-major. Such a wonderful work and part of a whole collection of French suites that Bach composed. We covered the first two movements. The first movement was a moderate speed. The second movement is fast. Now we come to this lyrical sarabande and it's interesting that, even though, this is beautiful and mellow and flowing and melodic, it's still the same principles of delineating melodies from one another with phrasing still is appropriate. I'm gonna play the first section of the sarabande so you can hear this gorgeous movement at least the first part of it.

Beautiful lyrical writing, wonderful theme. That's just the first section. There's quite a bit more at this moment, but I wanted you to get a flavor. Now the two aspects of phrasing and ornamentation are appropriate here but you'll notice I'm not doing the same clipped staccato that I was doing the faster movements. Why? Well, staccato doesn't actually mean short as a lot of people think. Staccato simply means detached. In a fast movement to detach notes, you must play them rather short. There isn't time to play them detached and still have much length to them. In a slow movement like this, you can play them to attach without making them sound clipped and unnatural. Listen to what it would sound if I played the same kind of staccato that I did in the faster movement in this sarabande.

You could make a case for that and there are some musicians who would play it that way and it could work. I kinda like to make it a little bit more melodic. Now what I would not do, however, is to completely obfuscate the whole counterpoint by playing everything very mushy kinda of like what you'd expect with 19th-century music.

Now Bach is so malleable in the performer's hands that indeed the last performance they played and the one before that with the clipped staccatos, they all sound pretty good. It's just a testament how great the music is. But I think that being able to delineate the counterpoint without hitting you over the head with it is approach that I think works really beautifully for this movement, which is why I think the balance, listen again. Playing the eighth notes detached but not short.

So that is one suggestion of how you can approach this. You might prefer one of the other ways and that's okay. That's what interpretation is all about. Also, ornamentation can be done in many different ways. For example, the very first trill, that one is nothing etched in stone that says you couldn't play more notes. It's whatever you like. Make sure you measure your trills so that it is reliable, but you can experiment. And indeed some performers will play it differently on the repeat. Why not? You play everything twice in this movement because the first section repeats so does the second section. So you could embellish differently on the two repeats if you wish. There's so much you can do with this. You could also play it on a harpsichord. Indeed, a harpsichord was the instrument of this age. You can learn quite a bit by playing it on different keyboards to get a feel for what Bach might have heard and played the one he actually played this music.

Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at virtualsheetmusic.com. Look forward to more continuing series on the Fifth French Suite of Bach.

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