Partita No.3 in A minor, BWV 827

Fantasia

Allemande

Courante

Sarabande

Burlesca

Scherzo

Gigue

Although the six Partitas were the first published of Bach’s keyboard suites – they were issued on a yearly basis between 1726 and 1731 and then collected together as Part I of the Clavierübung – they actually represent the culmination of his work in this form. Some are less ambitious than others, it is true, but there is nothing in the earlier English Suites or, still less, the French Suites to equal the stature of Partitas like No.4 in D major or No.6 in E minor.

Partita No.3 in A minor, which includes a Burlesca and a Scherzo where the others might offer an air or a rondeau or a fully developed minuet, is comparatively short and comparatively light. It is probably not for that reason, however, that it is less frequently performed than most of its companions. The problem – in so far as it is a problem – is that the opening Fantasia is far less dramatic than the first movements of any of the other Partitas. It is a two-part invention so subtly written that its thematic imagery is uncommonly modest in profile and its structure, in spite of its formal symmetry, is correspondingly elusive in shape. In compensation, the Allemande is extravagantly decorative in line, complex in rhythm and highly sophisticated in its contrapuntal development. It has been suggested that, like the Tempo di Gavotta in Partita No.6, the Italian-style Corrente is an arrangement of piece for violin and bass – which, to judge by the two-part texture and the scoring of the right-hand part with its prominent “open-string” Gs in the second half, could well be the case. The Sarabande, on the other hand, although it consistently behaves like a trio in its imitative treatment of the opening theme, is one of Bach’s most beautifully written keyboard inspirations.

Why Bach attached the title Burlesca to a piece which appears in Anna Magdalena’s Clavier-Büchlein as a Menuet is not at all clear – unless it is to draw attention to a very short passage in parallel octaves in the second half – and the Scherzo is no joke either. In the overall design of the suite, however, they are well placed, the Burlesca as a lively contrast to the intimacy of the preceding Sarabande, the minimally contrapuntal Scherzo to offset the three-part fugal texture of the concluding Gigue.