page_title: Organ Sonatas (Bach)
section_title: Sonata No. 5 in C major, BWV 529
hierarchical_section_title: Organ Sonatas (Bach) / Musical structure / Sonata No. 5 in C major, BWV 529
caption_attribution_description: Allegro from first edition of Sonata Op.5 No.3 by Arcangelo Corelli, published by Gasparo Pietra Santa
context_page_description: The organ sonatas, BWV 525–530 by Johann Sebastian Bach are a collection of six sonatas in trio sonata form. Each of the sonatas has three movements, with three independent parts in the two manuals and obbligato pedal. The collection was put together in Leipzig in the late 1720s and contained reworkings of prior compositions by Bach from earlier cantatas, organ works and chamber music as well as some newly composed movements. The sixth sonata, BWV 530, is the only one for which all three movements were specially composed for the collection. When played on an organ, the second manual part is often played an octave lower on the keyboard with appropriate registration. Commentators have suggested that the collection might partly have been intended for private study to perfect organ technique, some pointing out that its compass allows it to be played on a pedal clavichord. The collection of sonatas is generally regarded as one of Bach's masterpieces for organ. The sonatas are also considered to be amongst his most difficult compositions for the instrument.
context_section_description: Movements
  Allegro  C major • play MP3
  Allegro BWV 529/1 • 5:05
  This brightly scored and skillfully composed movement has a da capo A–B–A form. In structure and texture it resembles a trio sonata in the galant style for two flutes and continuo. The range of the keyboard parts, however, is beyond that of such instruments; and the succinct and idiomatic keyboard writing with intricate development sections are typical of the organ sonatas. The A section is 50 bars long. After the 54 bar development section B, it is reprised in its entirety.
  The opening two bars of the A section comprise a solo semiquaver flourish in one of the manuals followed by a tutti response in quavers. It recurs throughout the movement, marking the beginning of new episodes. In the first sixteen bar segment it alternates with semiquaver scale passages played imitatively between the two manuals. That material is then repeated in the dominant key with the upper parts exchanged. There is a short "development" episode of 14 bars where for 7 bars the material of the opening segment is permuted between the parts—at one stage over a long pedal point—and then repeated with the manual parts inverted. A brief 5 bar coda reprising the imitative semiquaver scales leads into section B.
  In conformity with the whole movement, the main development section B has a symmetrical da capo a–b–a structure, made up of 21 bars, 12 bars and 21 bars. A fugue subject in semiquavers is introduced at the beginning of section B: although similar in shape to the flourish opening of the main theme, it involves scale figures in contrast to arpeggios. The fugue subject is freely developed in exchanges between the upper parts before fragments of the main theme of increasing length begin to be heard, starting with the opening flourish. In the central b episode, two 4 bar reprises of the main theme encase 4 bars where elements of both themes are heard simultaneously, alternating between the manuals. There are significant modulations in section B particularly in the interjections of the main theme: the first section a is in the key of C major; section b is in C major with interjections in F major and A minor; and then an inversion of the material of section a returns in A minor with interjections of the main theme in G major, F major, D minor and C major, in anticipation of the reprise of section A.
  Throughout the movement the pedal part plays the role of a continuo, in a particularly simple form in section B. In the A sections the pedal part includes a walking bass in quavers as well as pedal points; many of the pedal motifs are derived from figures in the keyboard parts.
  Largo  A minor • play MP3
  Largo BWV 529/2 • 4:32
  Manuscript copies, made by Vogler, Walther and Kellner, show that this movement was often performed as an intermediate movement between the Prelude and Fugue in C major for organ, BWV 545. It is thought to have been originally composed in Weimar and reworked for the collection of organ sonatas.
  Sackmann (2000) notes that this movement—like many other instrumental slow movements by Bach such as the sinfonia from the Weimar cantata Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, BWV 21—shows the influence of the so-called "Corelli style," an Italian sonata style refined and perfected by Arcangelo Corelli. The style is exemplified in the "embellished" slow movements of Corelli's violin sonatas Op. 5, in which the range of musical motifs is widely varied, both through rhythm and "diastema" [the intervals between consecutive notes in the melody]. As Crocker (1986) explains, this style is distinguished by its lyricism: Corelli elevated the sonata da chiesa to a new level of eloquence "with a lyricism found only before in vocal music"; the style was "smoother and clearer" than that of earlier composers, "giving a feeling of spaciousness and breadth that happily reinforced the greater length".
  Williams (1985) gives a broad musical description of the Largo as a movement with two voices in dialogue over a continuo bass combining aspects of three different musical forms: fugue, ritornello and da capo ari
caption: Allegro from Sonata No.3 of Corelli's Op.5, first published in Rome in 1700 and later in Amsterdam in 1710 with agréments or "embellishments"
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