Not every court had three oboes for the First Concerto , or three cellos or violas for the Third. The First Concerto calls for a piccolo violin tuned a minor third higher than a normal one. It was apparently not a common instrument, though its rarity would not have deterred Bach, an enthusiastic instrumental experimenter who elsewhere wrote for such unusual instruments as the viola pomposa a five-string combination violin and viola , oboe da caccia, slide trumpet, violoncello piccolo, and tenor oboe.
Yet, paradoxically, the Brandenburgs present instrumentation problems that a modern symphony orchestra can cope with only by, as it were, faking it. Bach specified some instruments that modern symphonic players don't play, or which would be ineffective with modern instruments in a large concert hall. Piccolo violins are, if anything, harder to come by now than in , and while period-instrument groups will use them, the mainstream symphonic violinist tends to play the First Concerto on a normal-sized instrument.
The Sixth Concerto calls for two violas and two violas da gamba, a bowed six-string instrument tuned in fourths with frets on the neck vestiges of it survive in many modern double basses. Symphony orchestras use cellos in place of the gambas, which in any case would have a tough time balancing modern violas, which are louder than their Baroque counterparts. The Second Concerto calls for a recorder, an instrument hopelessly overmatched by the modern trumpet, so the modern flute is often substituted.
Sometimes we can't be sure what instruments Bach intended. The bottom lines of most Baroque pieces are usually designated "bass" or "continuo" and are meant to be played by whatever instruments are available to play the bass and improvise chords. In the six Brandenburg Concertos, Bach indicated five different configurations on the bottom line, but it is not clear what distinctions he meant to make, and there have been numerous interpretations.
Even more mysterious are the Flauti d'Echo "echo flutes" that solo along with the violin in the Fourth Concerto. Did Bach mean some specific sort of instrument, or that the flutes were used in an echoing sort of way, or something else altogether? In Bach's day, it could refer to works for any number of instruments, including one.
Working for His Royal Highness would have been a seriously upward move. Eventually, it ended up being found by the custodian of the Prussian royal library in The concertos were then published, for the first time, in The rare manuscript was almost lost again during World War II before another librarian stepped in to save the day. Due to heavy bombing and fighting in Germany, a librarian transported the manuscript out of the country. Unfortunately, his train fell under an aerial bombing as well.
The librarian escaped into the forest with the work under his coat. The result was that a lot of wonderfully talented musicians needed work. Thus Bach was able to compose for a good number of skilled musicians who could perform what he was writing. These performances represent the first time that the Nashville Symphony has ever presented the complete Brandenburg Concertos. Of these six works, the orchestra has only performed Concerto No. Bach is known to have been deeply interested in numbers and mathematics, which were often coded into his compositions, and the numeral 6 figures prominently in his music: In addition to his six Brandenburg Concertos, he composed six Suites for Solo Cello and his celebrated Six Partitas for keyboard.
He even wrote a poem about smoking a pipe that consisted of six stanzas. These six concertos are considered among the pinnacle of Baroque composition.
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