They are a set of six keyboard suites Bach composed around the 1720s, the time when he was writing many important instrumental works, because along with the Inventions and Sinfonias and the 48 Preludes and Fugues that make up the Well-Tempered Clavier, the French Suites formed an important part of Bach’s education for his pupils.
Traditionally, they are distinguished from the six English Suites by not having a Prelude and being generally a good deal smaller in scale. Stylistically, they are the more immediately melodic and less technical of the two sets of suites, and they don’t have anything like as much counterpoint, but rather focus more sharply on the exploration of cantabile melodies and idiomatic textures.
Except for those movements that found their way into his wife Anna Magdalena’s Clavierbuchlein, that he wrote especially for her as a wedding present, no other copies of the French Suites in Bach’s hand survive, and so we don’t exactly know what title he originally gave his six French Suites
The French Suite No. 1 BWV 812 has six movements Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Minuets I and II, and Gigue, which does follow the general pattern of those times, namely the basic 4 movements, of Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and Gigue, with any extra movements placed before the final Gigue. I have moved the key up a tone from Dm, to Em, this new key being much more suitable guitaristically.
Chris Dumigan April 2025
