The only movements that Music 3AB students have to study are the first two, but it doesn't hurt to be reasonably familiar with the third either. I'm only going to talk about the first two movements for now though.
Bach's Brandenburg Concerto no. 2 is, of course, of the concerto genre. Basically, concertos draw on the whole idea of the stile concertato, or rather, the principle of strong contrasts within a piece of music. Concertos normally achieve this contrast by pitting a soloist or a group of soloists against the rest of the ensemble (known as the ripieno). Concertos in which the group is divided up into a soloist and ripieno is called a solo concerto, while concertos in which the group is divided up into a small group of soloists (a.k.a. the "concertino") and the ripieno is known as a concerto grosso. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto no. 2 is an example of a concerto grosso, with a concertino consisting of a high F trumpet, a flute, an oboe and a violin, as well as a ripieno containing strings and basso continuo. (Basso continuo is basically the group of instruments playing the bass line of Baroque music, and normally consists of one bass instrument and a keyboard instrument; for example, a basso continuo can consist of a cello and a harpsichord.)
Just before I get into the nitty-gritty details of the piece, let's have a quick look at Bach's musical career as a whole. Bach, working as a musician in the Baroque period, needed to have employment to make a living. From the age of 18, he started working as an organist to the New Church in Arnstadt, and later at Mühlhausen. His employment at the time did not require him to compose anything, but he composed a few cantatas nevertheless. Later on, when he wanted to get into composing church music but his employers at Mühlhausen weren't too keen on church music, Bach looked for work elsewhere, and was fortunate enough to find a position as a member of the chamber orchestra and organist at the Ducal Court at Weimar. At this point, he was still much better known for his instrumental skills than his composing skills. In 1714, however, Bach was promoted to Concertmaster, where he was required to produce one cantata a month. In 1717, Bach was offered an even better position at the Court of Anhalt-Cöthen: the position of Capellmeister, the highest rank given to a musician during the Baroque period. Unfortunately, his employers here also weren't so keen on church music, so Bach composed more secular cantatas and instrumental works instead. He also composed the 6 Brandenburg Concertos at this time. In 1723, Bach finally got his dream job, supervising the music for Leipzig's four main churches. The work was very demanding as it also involved training the choristers, but he must have liked it because he stayed in this position for some 27 years- until the day he died.
Now, where were we? Oh, yes, that's right- back to the music. Let's start off with the first movement of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto no. 2- it seems a rather logical place to start.
This movement is in ritornello form, which is kind of like rondo form in which there is a recurring theme, or ritornello, that is interspersed with other themes. However, unlike rondo form in which the recurring theme is repeated almost exactly the same way every time, the recurring theme can change over time: it can change key or be extended and developed in other ways. Alternatively, it might also be fragmented: only part of the ritornello may appear.
Now for a really quick analysis of this piece.
The ritornello theme in this piece is heard for the first 8 bars, after which there is an episode in which the solo violin plays a tune (accompanied by basso continuo, of course- basso continuo ties the work together). Then everyone comes back in for the ritornello for another couple of bars, before the solo oboe plays the same tune, accompanied by solo violin and basso continuo. Then pretty much the same thing happens twice more except that we've now modulated to C Major and the combination of instruments in the episodes changes: in the next episode it's solo flute melody with solo oboe and basso continuo accompaniment, and in the episode after that it's solo trumpet with solo flute and basso continuo accompaniment. Next everyone comes back in for the ritornello, except this time the ritornello occurs for 6 bars, as opposed to all those puny little 2-bar fragments that we had before. Then the entire concertino plays in the next episode, though only the trumpet has the melody: all the other soloists and the basso continuo are just accompaniment. Everyone then comes back for the ritornello, but now we're in D minor for a ritornello that goes on for a while and has a whole bunch of sequences and some sequential imitation in it. A sequence, by the way, is basically a small melodic fragment that repeats over and over again at different pitches. Imitation is when a melodic fragment is repeated by different instruments. Anyway, as the ritornello goes on, after a few sequences, we come to a part where the melody is passed between different instruments, kind of like imitation as I said above. First it's played by solo trumpet, then solo flute, then solo oboe, and then the music modulates back to the home key for a while before finally we get to another episode, this time a solo flute playing the melody, accompanied by solo violin and basso continuo. Soon solo oboe joins in with the melody while flute gets delegated to an accompaniment line (I don't know if it's just me, but I think that it sort of hints of the movement following this one). Finally, the trumpet joins in with the melody while oboe becomes yet another accompaniment line, followed by a new ritornello in what I think is C minor but I'm not sure (I can't find the sheet where I wrote down all the modulations and stuff, but I'm not exactly looking hard right now, so I might find it later). This is yet another pretty long ritornello with sequences and terraced dynamics and stuff as well as something called "stretto" in bar 94 which is where the time between entries in a canon or whatever is reduced (e.g. instead of 4 beats between entries, it might be only 2 beats instead). At last, in the upbeat to bar 103 onwards, we hear the ritornello tune for the last time. First, we hear it unison, then everyone goes off and does their own thing after only a few bars (typical Baroque music...). The piece comes to an end in bar 118, without a rit or anything, probably because that would spoil the drive and forward motion so prized during the Baroque era.
Wow. That was a lot. *exhales deeply and noisily*
Now for the second movement!
The second movement only has the concertino instruments minus the trumpet, and the basso continuo. The ripieno strings aren't playing here. This movement is in D minor, as opposed to F Major of the movement before, which is partly why the trumpet isn't playing in this movement- in the Baroque era, brass instruments could only really play well in one particular key because they didn't have all the valves and whatnot that modern brass instruments have today. In fact, many middle movements of concertos lack trumpets because the middle movement tends to be in a different key, as well as being generally softer and slower (so you wouldn't want some loud bright trumpet spoiling the whole effect).
Anyway, pretty much the whole movement is a round. The violin starts off with the melody, and then the oboe joins in two bars later, followed by the flute that joins in two bars later. It's not an exact round, as the flute part in bars 19-23 doesn't exactly mirror anything that has happened in the oboe or violin parts. The basso continuo is pretty much just playing broken chords, which is great if you want to be a nerd and practise doing some harmonic analysis.
I don't really have much more in the way of analysis for this movement, but do listen to it because it's pretty.
Now, after hearing this, you might be curious about the other Brandenburgs. All the other Brandenburg Concertos had different sets of instruments making up the concertino. Some of these Brandenburg Concertos are also classified as "orchestral concertos" or something like that in which there isn't really a defined split between concertino and ripieno.
No. 1: Violino piccolo, 3 oboes, 2 horns, bassoon
No. 2: Violin, flute, oboe, trumpet
No. 3: Strings
No. 4: Violin, 2 flutes
No. 5: Clavier (harpsichord), violin, flute
No. 6: Violone, 2 violas da gamba, viols with 6 strings (these are all low string instruments from the Baroque era)
No. 5 has a really crazy harpsichord solo. There is a pretty damn strong contrast between the style of the harpsichord solo and the rest of the work. I guess it fits with the whole stile concertato and principle of contrast?
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