Grieg: From Holberg's Time, Op. 40

Last month, I listened to Grieg's Op. 40 a few times, both the orchestrated version and the solo piano version.  As the title page notes, From Holberg's Time was purposely written in an older style ("im alten Style"):

The Holberg in the title is Ludwig Holberg (1684-1754), a Norwegian man of letters.

While listening to the piano version, I noticed a phrase in the first movement:

(click the image to enlarge it)
(notation found here)

When I heard this it sounded familiar to me, although I had to look up the notation to figure out what was going on and why it sounded familiar.  Starting in the forty-ninth measure, the bass part starts descending, but after every two notes, it alternates octaves and repeats the last note from the previous pair.  Or, at least, it alternates octaves to some degree, since the notes are also doubled in octaves.  (This is in the orchestrated version too, although the notes aren't doubled by octaves.)

This sounded familiar because this same type of figure is in the continuo parts of two Bach works that I looked into recently, Christ lag in Todes Banden (BWV 4) and the Third Orchestral Suite in D major (BWV 1068).

(notation found here [BWV 4] and here [BWV 1068])

For the past year and a half (I finished it yester-day), I'd been reading a book of Edvard Grieg's letters (Edvard Grieg: Letters to Colleagues and Friends, Benestad and Halverson, eds.), and I recently read a letter he wrote to August Winding on 4 February 1875 saying that

recently in St. Thomas Church [in Leipzig] I heard the first concert by a Bach Association under the leadership of Volkland, von Holstein and Spitta (the author of an excellent book on Bach).  The concert included three cantatas by Bach that had not been performed publicly before.  I have never heard anything so beautiful by Bach; they are marvelous, great, profound, childlike and fervent.

I'm not sure if Christ lag in Todes Banden is one of the cantatas that Grieg heard, but that letter at least illustrates that Grieg was fairly familiar with Bach's works.

From Holberg's Time is from 1884, almost ten years after Grieg heard those Bach cantatas in Leipzig.  So between Grieg's documented familiarity with Bach's works and the close historical time period between Holberg (1684-1754) and Bach (1685-1750), it seems like Grieg might have taken that particular phrase from Bach's suite and/or cantata and used it to evoke that particular time period in his own work.

Mendelssohn: Prelude and Fugue in G major, Op. 37, No. 2

I recently watched a Gresham College lecture titled The German Revolution in English Organ Technology.  Mendelssohn had a lot to do with some of the changes that were effected (he was "a catalyst... [who] open[ed] people’s ears to the possibilities of organs from abroad and a new way of building English organs"), and his Prelude and Fugue in G major, Op. 37, No. 2 was used as an example.  I'd heard this piece before, but listening to it then, I thought I noticed something, so I consulted the notation.

At the beginning of the fugue, there are pairs of half-steps:

(click the image to enlarge it)
(notation found here)

In the second measure of the pedal part, there's C to B and then F to E.  Bridging the fourth and fifth measures, there's G to F# and then C to B in the left-hand.

I'd thought I heard the B-A-C-H motif, which is also comprised of two descending half-steps (Bb to A and then C to B).  Obviously, this isn't the same, but it is similar.  Mendelssohn knew Bach's organ works, and the lecturer mentioned Bach's influence on Mendelssohn's own organ works, so I'm wondering if his inclusion of those descending half-step figures is an indication of that influence.  It'd certainly be a minuscule indication, but I still felt it worth noting, for myself if for nothing else.

Schumann: 6 Fugues on BACH, Op. 60

Because to-day's Schumann's birthday, I listened to his 6 Fugues on BACH.  The second fugue (Lebhaft) contained a part that sounded familiar, so I did some research and discovered that it's pretty similar to part of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565.

(click on the image to enlarge it)
(notation found here [Bach] and here [Schumann])

I have no real musical training, so I might be wrong about this, but it seems that for his fugue Schumann - like Bach - used a phrase that alternates between a single note and progressively lower notes.  Bach's phrase (starting in the third measure here) alternates between A and various other notes (G, F, E, D, C#, and so on) while Schumann's (starting in the second measure) alternates between G and other notes (F, Eb, D, C, and so on).  Similar figures occur later in both works, but I've used examples that are easier to see.

I knew that Schumann used the B-A-C-H motif in his 6 Fugues on BACH (it's the first four notes in the second fugue), but I hadn't realized that he also referenced other Bach work.  I'd thought that the BACH in the title was meant to indicate that signature phrase (Bb, A, C, B), but I suppose it also indicates a larger influence.  I'm not that familiar with most of Bach's organ works (I have only a two-disc set, and even that I haven't listened to that much), so there might be others quoted or referenced in Schumann's 6 Fugues that I'm oblivious to.   BWV 565, however, is widely recognized (in contemporary times at least), so that reference was easy to pull out.

Bach: Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn, BWV 119

Last month, I got a box set of Bach's complete sacred cantatas.  I've been listening to them at the rate of a disc per day since 21 March (Bach's birthday according to some calendars).  One of the cantatas I listened to to-day is Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn, BWV 119.  A particular phrase in the seventh movement caught my ear.  It's an arpeggiation after which the fifth is repeated.  I looked up the score and found it in the oboes at bars 69-70.  Four bars earlier, it's also in the violin and viola parts.  I've listened to the cantata only once (and just briefly looked at the notation in order to find some examples), but I think it appears in various instruments and arpeggiates different chords.

This particular phrase caught my ear because it's also in the first Orchestral Suite, BWV 1066.  I've been listening to one of the suites everyday this year, and I listened to the first Orchestral Suite everyday from January through March, during which I apparently became pretty familiar with it.  The phrase in question is in the violins and viola at the very beginning of the second gavotte, in the third movement.  The note values are twice that of the notes in BWV 119 (with an even longer ending note), but otherwise, the rhythm is the same.

(notation found here [BWV 119] and here [BWV 1066], click the image to enlarge it)

I'm not sure if there's anything more to this than just Bach's re-using this particular phrase, but I found it noteworthy.

Bach's Gavottes

In listening to pieces from my Classical Music Queue (explained here), I recently listened to Bach's partitas for solo violin.  Or at least I listened to what excerpts I have; I have complete recordings of the first and third, but only one movement from the second.  In listening to the gavotte en rondeau of the third partita, I found a similarity to the gavotte in Bach's third orchestral suite:

(notation found here and here)

There are three groups of trills (with the first two notes as eighth notes and the third as a quarter note), and while the note groups of the two works aren't in the same intervals, the general position pitch-wise is the same.  That is: in both works, the first group of notes is the highest; the second is the lowest; and the third is in between the first two.  Both are capped with a (relatively) lower half-note.

There are a lot of threes here - the number of notes in each group, the number of groups, the movement number, and the classification number (No. 3).  Apparently, Bach didn't put the suites in a set though, so the "No. 3" part of "Suite No. 3" is just a coincidence.

In researching the pieces, I haven't found any dates of composition that agree with each other (the partita seems to be 1720, but I've found both 1717 and 1730 for the third orchestral suite), so I can't tell whether the partita or the orchestral suite was written first.

When I add a piece to the Classical Music Queue, I also write down where I found a reference to it.  Interestingly, the partitas were mentioned in some interviews given during a performance of all four of the orchestral suites that I listened to on NPR in November.  However, neither of the times it was mentioned was really a comparison between the partitas and the orchestral suites.

Musical Crosses

From February through April, I was reading John Eliot Gardiner's Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven.  In Chapter 5: The Mechanics of Faith, Gardiner briefly mentions how Bach inserted crosses via the shape of the notes in his music.

From Gardiner's Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

In church to-day, I realized that these musical crosses are also in some of the music in the Divine Service, Setting Three (from the Lutheran Service Book).  They may be in some of the other settings and liturgies too, but these are the two I noticed:

In the Sanctus

In the Nunc Dimittis

This might just be a coincidence, but I still think it's really interesting.  Especially considering that I've probably sung these pieces dozens if not hundreds of times, and it was only now, after reading Gardiner's book, that I found the sign of the cross in them.

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