- Bach likely composed his six “French Suites” between 1722-1725.1
- Bach likely composed these suites during his years as Kapellmeister at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen (1717-1723). Because Bach’s employer, Prince Leopold, was a Calvinist, Bach was not required to compose or perform liturgical music in this position. (Calvinist worship generally utilized unaccompanied union psalm singing only). Instead, Bach was to provide instrumental music for the court, and so many of his instrumental works date from this period.
- An early version of the first five suites appears in the first Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach. Several of them appear again in the second Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, begun in 1725, showing that Bach revised the pieces during his early years at Leipzig – possibly to use them as teaching material.2
- Bach himself never referred to this set of suites as “French Suites.” There are several theories about how they obtained the nickname, which started to appear in Berlin circles in the latter half of the 18th century:3
- Bach’s early biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel suggested that these suites so called “because they are written in the French taste,” i.e., influenced by the suites of composers like Couperin.
- Another possibility is that the “French” designation was simply used to distinguish them from the “English suites,” which may have been written for an English patron.
- You can find links to each suite’s full list of movements on the French Suites’ IMSLP page.
Sources
- Christoph Wolff and Walter Emery, “Bach, Johann Sebastian,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed July 23, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-6002278195.
- Ulrich Scheideler, forword to Johann Sebastian Bach, French Suites BWV 812-817 (Germany: G. Henle, 2017), VI.
- Ibid.
Cut IDs
21393 21274 21394 21395 48261 21275 21396 41100 49639 13122 20414 21397 41101 21398 45996