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The Partita in A Minor for Unaccompanied Flute BWV 1013: Problems and Possibilities

Abstract:Bach’s Partita in A Minor for Unaccompanied Flute BWV 1013 is well known to listeners and especially to flutists, yet the provenance of its sole source remains imprecisely understood, its date and principal copyist unidentified; even the original title is uncertain. There also remain a number of unresolved textual problems. Proceeding from the commonly accepted view that the work was originally composed ca. 1720 at Cöthen, this essay examines BWV 1013 for the first time within the broader context of early eighteenth-century chamber music. Although technically more challenging than other early flute compositions by Bach—the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 and one or two Cöthen cantatas—the Partita remains entirely idiomatic to the instrument of the early eighteenth century, and its demands on the player are consistent with those of certain other works of the period. Like a number of contemporaries, however, such as Johann Joachim Quantz, Bach purposefully avoids an older French style of writing in favor of one whose technical demands are influenced by the latest trends in violin music. A study of contemporary sources and Bach’s own music further suggests that eighteenth-century performers might have introduced notes inégales and free ornamentation into certain movements. An examination of the four movements with respect to genre, musical text, and style reveals that the Allemande bears comparison with contemporary preludes as well as allemandes; the Corrente similarly shows parallels to works by Johann Martin Blockwitz and Jean-Daniel Braun (including a movement attributed ambiguously to both Quantz and Sylvius Leopold Weiss); the unidentified copyist of the Sarabande may have truncated the phrase in which the opening theme is reprised; and the Bourrée Angloise, far from being an anomaly, is an example of a stylish type of French contredanse common at the time.