
J.S. Bach and the French Baroque
Part of: Bach Festival 2025
During Bach’s composing years, French style and culture were highly influential in Germany, considered to add a refined touch to fashion, music, and more. So it is that French grace notes, like the rhythms of court dances, found their way into the music of a composer who never visited the country. Yet, as always, in his habit of exploring other genres and composers—he was known as a particular admirer of Couperin—Bach emerged as a distinctive voice. “What I call the French foam in Sebastian Bach’s music cannot—I must admit—be so readily lifted off that you can lay your hands on it. It is like ether: it permeates all, yet it is intangible,” German composer Karl Freidrich Zelter wrote in 1827, adding “his style is typically Bach, as is everything about him.”
In that aspect, Bach was joined by Jean-Marie LeClair, a dancer, violinist, and composer credited with establishing the French school of violin performance. Leclair discovered the music of Italian and other composers during his extensive travels, and in blending them into a style of his own, has been called the French Bach. Conductor Théotime Langlois de Swarte contrasts the contemporaries as the soloist in twin A-minor concertos, and leads Orchestra of St. Luke’s in more thrilling works by Bach and his French contemporaries.
Program
Nicola Matteis
Fantasia No. 2
Johann Sebastian Bach
Auf Meinen Lieben Gott B.A 37,212
Johann Sebastian Bach
Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV 1041
Johann Sebastian Bach
Air from Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068
Johann Sebastian Bach
Badinerie from Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor, BWV 1068
Jean-Marie Leclair
Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 7, No. 5
Jean-Féry Rebel
Les Caractères de la Danse
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Suite from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme