The famous masterful set of Six Brandenburg Concertos was composed bye Johann Sebastian Bach during his service as Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. Christian Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg, commissioned composers to write works for his court orchestra. Impressed after meeting Bach in 1719, he asked him to write a set of concertos. The assignment was finished ahead of time in 1721. Bach named the set ‘Six Concertos for Divers Instruments.’ Humbly, he submitted the compositions to his benefactor with the plea that he not judge ‘their imperfections too harshly,’ and that he try to find in them ‘the profound respect and the very humble allegiance that they seek to convey.’ Bach used the Italian form of the concerto grosso he inherited from Vivaldi and others. This work, a remarkable expression of Bach’s adventurous mind, stands as his earliest essay in absolute music on a grand scale.
His felicitous idea of contrasting the ripieno (large instrumental group) with the concertino (small cadre of solo players) was done by using a different set of solo instruments for each of his concertos – except No. 3 where the orchestra is divided into three parts (violins, violas, cellos) to replace the solos. No. 1 is scored for a wind ensemble of horns and bassoon added to the strings, while the violino piccolo is prominent. No. 2 has a flute, oboe, trumpet and violin in solo positions. No. 4 features a violin and two flutes (or recorders); No. 5 the flute, violin, and harpsichord; and No. 6 only the strings as in No. 3. The originality, variety, vigor, and glorious melody are audacious statements of Bach’s genius.
Karl Geiringer, in his expert study of Bach writes, “The Brandenburg Concertos seem to embody the splendor and effervescence of court life at Cöthen, and, moreover, they reveal the composer’s delight in writing for a group of highly trained instrumentalists. There is an exuberance and abundance of inspiration in this music which only a genius, aware of his newly achieved full mastery, could call forth. Craftsmanship and richly flowing melodic invention, logic and zest for experimenting, counterpoise each other here to an extent rarely equaled again even by Bach himself.” Ernest Human declared Bach’s position far ahead of his own time in his luxuriance of melody, his intensity in harmony “or the way he could force the most complex polyphony into the service of the profoundest emotional expression, or the freedom and variety of musical speech to which he could attain even while he fettered himself with seemingly the most crabbed forms…Within the…older forms that lay ready to his hands…he could indulge himself to his heart’s content in the sounding of the very depths of human soul…There is hardly an emotion that is not expressed, and with a poignancy that remains undiminished even after three generations of post-Tristan developments.”