3.3 (popular)
Sunday 6 February 2011
Tune of the Day: Rondeau by J.S. Bach
from Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor
This rondeau is the second movement from Johann Sebastian Bach's Orchestral Suite in B minor. In the Baroque era, the term rondeau referred to any piece that consists of a refrain and different “couplets”. This form later developed into the rondo, so popular in the time of Mozart.
The structure of this particular rondeau can be written as AABACA, where A is the refrain and B and C are two different couplets. What is interesting about this cut-time piece is that each phrase begins and ends in the middle of a measure, a characteristic which is commonly associated with the gavotte.