Dorothy Bishop

The six Cello Suites, BWV 1007-1012, are suites for unaccompanied cello by Johann Sebastian Bach. They are some of the most frequently performed and recognizable solo compositions ever written for cello. Bach most likely composed them during the period 1717–23, when he served as Kapellmeister in Köthen. The title given on the cover of the Anna Magdalena Bach manuscript was Suites à Violoncello Solo senza Basso (Suites for cello solo without bass).

These suites for unaccompanied cello are remarkable in that they achieve the effect of implied three- to four-voice contrapuntal and polyphonic music in a single musical line. As usual in a Baroque musical suite, after the prelude which begins each suite, all the other movements are based around baroque dance types; the cello suites are structured in six movements each: prelude, allemande, courante, sarabande, two minuets or two bourrées or two gavottes, and a final gigue. The Bach cello suites are considered to be among the most profound of all classical music works.

 

 

The Adagio in G minor for violin, strings, and organ continuo is a neo-Baroque composition popularly attributed to the 18th-century Venetian master Tomaso Albinoni but actually composed by 20th-century musicologist and Albinoni biographer Remo Giazotto, purportedly based on the discovery of a manuscript fragment by Albinoni. There is a continuing scholarly debate about whether the alleged fragment was real or a musical hoax perpetrated by Giazotto, but there is no doubt about Giazotto's authorship of the remainder of the work.

 

 

Ich steh mit einem Fuß im Grabe (I am standing with one foot in the grave), BWV 156, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed it in Leipzig for the third Sunday after Epiphany and first performed it on 23 January 1729. 

 

The cantata is well known for its opening sinfonia for orchestra and oboe solo.

 

 

La Folía (Spanish), or Follies of Spain (English), also known as folies d'Espagne (French),

Follia (Italian), and Folia (Portuguese), is one of the oldest remembered European musical themes, or primary material, generally melodic, of a composition, on record. The theme exists in two versions, referred to as early and late folias, the earlier being faster.