# Bach the internationalist



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

A while ago they played Bach's Italian Concerto on the radio. My wife asked why it was called "Italian."* I said that Bach often wrote in styles he considered Italian, French, or English (as well as North German I suppose).

But that raises a question. Can a normal person today identify Bach's intended national style from simply listening to his music? How?

*Fortunately she didn't ask why it was called a "concerto" when there was no orchestra in sight.


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

When the music is said to be in the Italian style, I tend to think that it must sound a bit like Vivaldi—and I think I often notice that it does. When it is in the French style, that likely means that it bears the hallmarks of Couperin. I probably wouldn't be able to detect that, since I only know one of Couperin's opuses. And in the English style? That would have me stumped: Purcell or Handel?


----------



## Grizzled Ghost (Jun 10, 2015)

KenOC said:


> Can a normal person today identify Bach's intended national style from simply listening to his music?


I'm not so sure a normal person today would be able to identify Bach.

I, having listened to classical music fairly intensively for five years or so (albeit not too much baroque), would have no chance of recognizing Bach's intended national style.

Perhaps some specialists could.


----------



## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Yes I can usually tell whether music is French or Italian style. To practice, all you need to listen to is strictly French Baroque and Italian Baroque, then contrast the difference. It's easy. Bach's_ Italian Concerto_ was very Italian in idiom.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Bach's own strong creative personality, and his ability to absorb and synthesize many styles, complicate attempts to find "Frenchness" or "Italianness" in his music, but the marks of foreign styles are present. Italian music tended to focus on "top-line," song-like melody rather than the complex counterpoint of Bach's own German tradition, and was open-textured and not heavily ornamented (traits familiar in Vivaldi, whom Bach admired and adapted many times). French music was often heavily ornamented with mordents, shakes, apoggiaturas, etc., and often featured strongly dotted rhythms, notably in the "French overture" which opens Bachs suites for both keyboard and orchestra (and similar movements in the works of Handel and other Baroque composers). The suite of pieces in dance rhythms (gavotte, allemande, gigue, etc.), beginning with a French overture, was French in origin; Bach's "English Suites" are said not to be particularly "English" in style, but are very much like the French Suites.


----------



## Balthazar (Aug 30, 2014)

Bach's _French Suites_ and _English Suites_ acquired those appellations well after they were written.

The first section in this Wikipedia article provides an interesting discussion of the complications in identifying any of these as representative of a national style. (e.g., only two of the six _Courantes_ in the _French Suites_ are in the French style, the remaining being in the Italian style.)

I will leave it to the musicologists among us to point out the technical means of distinguishing one national style from the other to avoid saying anything foolish...


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

This has nothing to do with an audible _Italian_ aesthetic.

The clue is in the name. *Italian Concerto.* The form to which the title refers was developed by Italian composers; the whole idea of a concertina section and ripeno section is an idea which comes from Italian composers and were utilised in the _concerto grosso._

Basically the Italian Concerto is just a keyboard work paying homage to the structural (and dynamic) developments from Italian composers. Don't forget that he much admired Vivaldi's music.


----------



## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Apparently, even modern day metal bands are continuing the Bach tradition of music in the Italian style:









Of course, too, there is always this:









And this:


----------

