Sheep May Safely Graze from BWV208 (1713) — Johann Sebastian Bach

arranged for piano by Egon Petri

Capriccio in B flat major BWV992 (1704?)

“on the departure of his beloved brother”

Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor BWV903 (c 1720–c1730)

Chaconne in D minor from BWV 1004

arranged for piano left-hand by Johannes Brahms

Neither the chorale “Jesu bleibet meine Freude” at the end of Bach’s Cantata No.147 nor the soprano solo “Schafe können sicher weiden” in the middle of the same composer’s Cantata No.208 seems a likely source of music for piano solo. What they have in common, however, is a firm and melodious vocal line accompanied by a woodwind obbligato. Making the most of that textural feature, which suggests a clear division of material between the hands, two expert pianists – Myra Hess in the first case and Egon Petri in the other – transformed them into highly effective piano pieces known, respectively, as Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring and Sheep May Safely Graze. According to Leon Fleisher, they are both “like mantra music.” Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels is likely to have known only one of them but, as a passionate huntsman, he must have found “Schafe können sicher weiden” a particularly flattering aspect of Bach’s Cantata Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd when it was presented to him as a 31st birthday present in 1713.

The Capriccio in B flat “on the departure of his beloved brother” is unique in Bach’s music in that is frankly, even explicitly programmatic – an idea inspired in the young composer, it seems, by the Biblical Sonatas published by Kuhnau in Leipzig in 1700. Whether the “beloved brother” was Johann Sebastian’s actual brother, Johann Jakob, who left Germany to join the band of Charles XII in Sweden in 1704, or his friend and “most worthy brother” Georg Erdmann is not of the first importance. Far more interesting is the music itself, the six movements of which represent the events surrounding the “brother’s” departure. The plaintive and insistent sixths of the opening Arioso (Adagio), for example, reflects his friends’ efforts to talk him out of his journey and the following vividly dissonant fugue (Andante) their description of the misfortunes that might befall him. The third movement, a passacaglia headed Adagissimo, is a highly expressive lament in the surprising key of F minor which, however, does not deter him, as they reluctantly acknowledge by bidding him farewell in the short, transitory fourth movement. With its jerky octaves in imitation of a posthorn, the Aria di Postiglione (Adagio poco) signals the arrival of the coach and the closing Fuga, in which trumpet calls mingle with the posthorn, seems to represent the journey itself.

The Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor, which is as sophisticated as the Capriccio in B flat is naive, is also unique. It represents Bach at his greatest and yet the Fantasia is in some ways the antithesis of Bach: it is romantic rather than baroque, apparently impulsive rather than strategic in continuity, often irrational rather than logical in its modulations. It is so extravagantly conceived in fact that there is a theory that it somehow represents an unedited version of an improvisation. The fact that it was thoroughly revised ten years after it was written seems, however, to rule out that idea.

The basic harmonic design of the Fantasia is clear enough, in that it cadences on the dominant half-way through and returns to the tonic at the end. But the progressions from the point where the spectacular opening toccata gives way to a kind of chorale harmonised in swirling arpeggios are as dramatic as they are, in some cases, difficult to understand. So are the tonal jolts in the passionately expressive recitative that occupies the second half of the construction. It is only in the five-bar coda that the harmonies, with diminished seventh chords descending over a pedal point, settle back into D minor. The following three-voice Fugue is “chromatic” not so much because of the rising semitones of the subject – there are many such Bach fugue subjects – as because of its modulations, like those of the Fantasia, to unlikely tonal areas. It reflects the Fantasia also in its unusual (as far as Bach’s keyboard fugues are concerned) use of five-not chords and, towards the end, its heavily emphatic octave-doublings of the bass line.

The Chaconne in D minor (from the Partita No.2 in D minor BWV 1004 for solo violin) is another great peak of Bach’s achievement and, though entirely characteristic in its long-term strategy, another inexhaustible source of fascination and speculation. No one understood it better, however, than Johannes Brahms. Although he described it to Clara Schumann as “incomprehensible” as well as “wonderful,” he was aware that its greatness derives essentially from its limitations: “Using the technique adapted to a small instrument the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings.” That is why when he transcribed it for piano in 1877 rather than lavish the whole range of keyboard resources on it, as Busoni was to do twenty years later, he scored it for left hand only. Playing it that way, he said, made him “feel like a violinist!” Certainly, he retained an element of the adversity experienced by the violinist, if only in having to spread some of the bigger chords.

The obvious disadvantage in Brahms’s version is that, since it is necessarily confined to the lower half of the keyboard (it is transposed down an octave) it lacks variety in colour in comparison with not only the Busoni transcription but also the violin original. At the same time – while it is faithful in every respect except that it substitutes more pianistic figuration for the arpeggiated harmonies twice required of the violinist – Brahms’s scoring highlights by its very restraint an essential harmonic aspect of the piece. The changes of mode, from D minor to D major at the beginning of the middle section and the return to D minor for the final section, are unusually effective here, both structurally an emotionally. Adding nothing, not even Bach’s implied harmonies, it does not aim to achieve anything like the pianist stature of the Busoni version but, taking as little as possible from the violinistic nature of the piece, it retains a baroque authenticity.