Concerto for harpsichord in d, BWV 1052

Many in our audience will recall that Bach held posts in many cities during his life. Given changing circumstances, he was at times more compelled to write sacred vocal music, at other times organ music, and at other times secular chamber works. In the early years of the 18th century, Italian solo concertos were taking Germany by storm. Bach seems to have taken notice first during his tenure at Weimar (1708-17), where he transcribed Venetian string concertos—mostly by Vivaldi—to the keyboard. During subsequent positions at Cöthen and Leipzig he still found time to explore and adapt the Italian precedent to suit his own flair for counterpoint and taut motivic development. Though assertions on chronology are often perilous, it seems fairly certain that Bach wrote the D-minor keyboard concerto, BWV 1052, around 1738 for use by his Collegium Musicum ensemble in Leipzig. But, of course, that’s hardly the whole story…
Just as with the earlier Vivaldi transcriptions, BWV 1052 actually derives from a (now lost) violin concerto of unknown authorship. This means that certain passages may not come across on the keyboard as they would have on the violin. For instance, at the first solo cadenza in A minor, the use of a repeated pitch (A) surrounded by upper and lower neighboring notes is idiomatic for the violin; the repeated A would be played as an open string, enhancing its resonance against the neighboring “stopped” or fingered tones. Bach himself wrote such textures in his E-major partita and A-minor sonata for solo violin. On harpsichord the effect can be approximated by use of separate manuals, and we’ll have to watch for David Schrader’s solution to this passage (something very similar also occurs in the finale’s first cadenza). But on the other hand, there are times when Bach has substantially recomposed the accompanying material to bolster the counterpoint, and this brings the left hand fully into the action. Such richness of texture simply cannot be achieved on the violin (e.g., the thick chords which punctuate the finale’s second cadenza).
There is a corollary to this borrowing of source material, for Bach himself had already used the D-minor concerto material in two sacred cantatas, BWV 146 and 188 (both from 1728). He took the first violin line from the opening Allegro and gave it to the organ in BWV 146. He transposed it down an octave, yielding a darker, weightier expression that suits the cantata’s message: “Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal in das Reich Gottes eingehen” (We must pass through great sadness in order to enter God’s kingdom). Later in the chorale Bach splices the concerto’s slow-movement material, transposes it down, and then newly composes a four-part chorus above it! It’s fair to say he was inspired. Finally, the concerto finale appears as the organ prelude to BWV 188, “Ich habe meine Zuversicht” (I have my confidence).
The upshot, of course, is that the cantata texts provide us with an indication of Bach’s feeling toward these instrumental themes. Thus, although his motivation to pull this material back together for a keyboard concerto in the later 1730s was primarily practical—he needed works for his Collegium—nevertheless we can get somewhat further along the lines of expressive interpretation by tracking the material’s previous incarnations. Bach clearly liked the inherent qualities of the theme—with its alternation between rising and falling contours and its characteristic syncopated leap—but credit must here go to the unknown composer of the original source. What Bach did with this material, of course, is wholly his own and that can especially be appreciated in the modulations, motivic development, and toccata-like cadenzas.

(c) Jason Stell