1 Largo
2 Vivace
3 Adagio
4 Presto

This short piece survives as a set of manuscript parts in Bach’s hand, dating from the early 1730s, but with no composer’s name attached. It has two unusual features: its bass line is identical that that of Bach’s Violin Sonata BWV 1021, and the violin part is written in scordatura (altered tuning, here with the strings tuned only to G and D), a device normally employed to make the part easier to play. For years it was assumed that Bach’s second son and pupil Carl Philipp Emmanuel probably had a substantial hand in the Trio, but more recent research suggests that it is more likely his father’s work, possibly composed for one of his pupils or music-loving friends. Certainly its modest scale indicates that it was intended for domestic use. There are four movements, all dance-like in quality, but tinged with minor-key melancholy.

^{Note by Wendy Thompson}

Johann Sebastian Bach
^{1685 – 1750 (Germany)}

Bach was orphaned by the age of 10, and was subsequently raised by his elder brother, with whom he studied organ and rudimentary composition. At 18 he became organist of St Bonifacius’ Church in Arnstadt. Here, not for the last time, Bach’s burgeoning talents as a performer brought him into conflict with the church authorities, who took exception to the young man’s elaborate improvisations and hymn accompaniments.

Bach swiftly outgrew the musical demands of Arnstadt, moving in 1707 to the wealthier church of St Blasius for whose choir and orchestra he wrote his first dateable works. The following year Bach was invited by the Duke of Weimar to become his court organist, and in 1714 was promoted to the post of Konzertmeister. With the support of the duke’s nephew, he was offered the vacant post of Kapellmeister at the neighbouring court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. Here he devoted much of his time to instrumental composition, from organ showpieces and ‘teaching’ works for keyboard to his magnificent Brandenburg Concertos.

Following his first wife’s death in July 1720 and re-marriage the following year to Anna Magdalena Wilcke, Bach accepted the post of Kantor at Leipzig’s respected St Thomas School and director of the town’s music on 23 May 1723. He was expected to be schoolmaster and choir-trainer; director of music at two town churches and supervisor for that at two others; organist; composer, orchestral and choral fixer. Additionally, Bach set about producing a new cantata to be performed at the main Sunday service and other important church feasts, a Herculean task that yielded more than 60 works a year over a five-year period.

During his lifetime, Bach gained wide recognition as a virtuoso organist and keyboard player and gifted teacher, although only a handful of his compositions
were published.

_{Profile by Andrew Stewart}

1 Sonade
2 Allemande
3 Première Courante
4 Seconde Courante
5 Sarabande
6 Gigue
7 Chaconne ou Passacaille
8 Gavotte
9 Menuet

Corelli’s influence on instrumental music spread far and wide in the late 17th century, even penetrating the conservative confines of the French court. The theorist Sébastien de Brossard, writing in 1695, claimed that every composer in Paris, especially the organists, was 'madly writing sonatas in the Italian manner'.

François Couperin le grand began his career as an organist at the court of the ageing Sun King, and by the time of Louis’s death in 1715 had established himself as the leading French composer of the time. His compositions strove to marry the best elements of the rival French and Italian styles – Couperin described his aim as 'Les goûts réunis’ (the reunion of styles).

Around the time that he gained his first court appointment in 1693, he began work on a set of four-movement trio sonatas . These six pieces with their characterful French titles, probably composed over a period of time in the mid-1690s, were directly inspired by Corelli, whose works, Couperin admitted, 'I shall love as long as I live', and whose memory he honoured in 1724 with a 'grand trio sonata' entitled L’apothéose de Corelli.

Two years later, he issued four of his early trio sonatas in print under the title Les Nations: sonade et suite de simphonies, renaming them La françoise, L’espagnole, L’impériale and La piémontoise , in subtle homage to France, Spain, England and Italy. In the preface to the publication, Couperin claimed that he had not changed or added much to the original pieces: 'I have merely added long suites, for which the sonatas are simply a prelude or a kind of introduction'.

The opening 'sonade' of La Françoise was originally entitled La pucelle (The Maid). Its eight sections form a miniature suite alternating slow and quick tempi, in which the slow sections are inflected by plangent chromaticism, while the faster ones are more dance-like. Eight further dances follow: an allemande in which flute and violin interweave their lines; a pair of stately courantes, the second faster than the first; a stately sarabande; a lively gigue; a chaconne over a recurring ground bass in the French style; and two quintessentially French dance-forms to end – a gavotte and a minuet.

^{Note by Wendy Thompson}

François Couperin
^{1668 – 1733 (France)}

François Couperin was a French Baroque composer, harpsichordi and organist. He began his musical studies at a young age with his father – Charles Couperin, organist of Paris’ Church St-Gervais – but his own success surpassed that of his family, and he became know as ‘Couperin le grand’.

As a teenager, Couperin inherited his father’s post, and in 1693 he became one of the four organists of the royal chapel which opened up new, prestigious opportunities: he taught harpsichord to the royal children, later became court harpsichordist, and established a reputation as a teacher and performer without rival, as well as a highly skilled composer.

Couperin composed chamber music, including trio sonatas and his Concerts royaux, and a small amount of music for organ, but he is best known for his keyboard works. He wrote four volumes of harpsichord music – over 230 pieces – that would become important influences on composers as diverse as JS Bach, Richard Strauss and Ravel, and it was for the harpsichord that he wrote a treatise on playing style that would become one of the main resources in the early music revival of modern times.

_{Profile by Paul Griffiths}

1 Allegro
2 Largo
3 Allegro

The Corellian trio sonata was closely related to another key instrumental genre of the Baroque era – the concerto. The greatest Italian exponent of the concerto principle was the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi, who exercised enormous influence on his European contemporaries, especially Bach. Vivaldi’s voluminous concerto output includes several for smaller ensemble, more akin to the traditional trio sonata. The G minor Concerto was almost certainly composed during Vivaldi’s long spell as music director at a Venetian orphanage, the Ospedale della Pietà, and probably postdates the introduction of the transverse flute there in 1728.

There are three movements, the first featuring dialogue between flute and violin interspersed with ritornello sections for all four instruments; the second, in B flat major, highlighting a graceful flute melody subtly accompanied by violin and cello alone; and the third a lively dance once again in solo-ritornello format.

^{Note by Wendy Thompson}

Antonio Vivaldi
^{1678 (Italy)– 1741 (Austria)}

Vivaldi began taking lessons in the violin at a young age from his father; and trained for priesthood. He was ordained in 1703, and his uncommon reddish hair earned him the nickname Il Prete Rosso ('The Red Priest'). Mere weeks later, he withdrew from liturgical duties and accepted the position of violin master at the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage for girls in Venice, Italy.

His time at Pietà proved valuable, as Vivaldi's earliest compositions were written during his tenure as violin master. This included a set of 12 trio sonatas, violin sonatas and concerto sets written in 1705; however it was L’estro Armonico ('The Inspiration Of Harmony'), published in 1711, that displayed his remarkable skill. It was this set that impressed his contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach enough to transcribe six of the works.

Vivaldi composed over 200 solo violin concertos, 27 for solo cello – with 20 written for the flute and oboe for a particularly talented student during his tenure at Pietà. From 1718 to 1720, he moved and worked in Mantua, and shifted his focus on composing opera; while still travelling back and forth to Rome and Venice. His first opera, Ottone in villa, was premiered in Vicenza in 1713. The success of the opera Armida al campo d’Egitto led to his position as impresario under Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt. From 1725 to 1729, five new collections of concerti (Op 8–12) were given to publishers; and Vivaldi later began to sell instrumental scores to individual buyers.

From the 1730s onwards, Vivaldi remained reasonably active as an impresario in Venice, Mantua and Rome, until his health began to decline. In 1740 he travelled to Vienna, but his declining health meant he did not live to see the production of his opera L’oracolo in Messenia in 1742. His funeral arrangements were made hastily, with a poor burial made the same day he passed. Until Vivaldi’s private collection of original scores were found in the 1920s, his position as one of Italy’s most influential composer was overlooked.

_{Profile by Yasmine Ali}

1 Prélude. A discretion – très vite
2 Gai
3 Vite
4 Gracieusement
5 Distrait
6 Modéré

During the first half of the 18th century, Georg Philipp Telemann’s reputation both in Germany and abroad exceeded that of Bach, and his music was widely available through a spate of publications. From the autumn of 1737 he spent eight months in Paris at the invitation of a group of notable performers, where, he later wrote, 'I had engraved new quartets sold by subscription and six sonatas entirely constructed from melodic canons.' The quartets to which he refers (trio sonatas in all but name) are the Nouveaux Quatuors en Six Suites: they were first performed by an ensemble including the celebrated viola da gamba player Jean-Antoine Baptiste Forqueray, and 'made the ears of both the royalty and the citizenry attentive'. Bach was among many European subscribers to the lucrative publication.

The six Quartets are essentially French in format – a succession of dances – but represent a subtle fusion of Gallic and Italian styles. No 6 in E minor opens with a seemingly traditional French overture alternating slow and fast sections, but with the violin interpolating cadenza-like passages clearly derived from the Italian concerto. Two courtly dance movements in the style of a gavotte and a menuet follow, enclosing a fast contrapuntal movement; then comes a quirky character piece marked 'Distrait', and the quartet ends with an expressive chaconne over a six-bar ground bass.

^{Note by Wendy Thompson}

Georg Philipp Telemann
^{1681 – 1767 (Germany)}

Georg Philipp Telemann was born in Magdeburg and studied law in Leipzig before switching to music and beginning a highly successful career which saw him holding important church, civic and court posts as a composer and musical administrator in a succession of German cities. In 1702, while still a student, he was appointed musical director of the Leipzig Opera, and important positions followed in Eisenach and Frankfurt before he became music director to the city of Hamburg in 1721, an appointment he held on to for the remaining 46 years of his life.

His reputation as an outstandingly prolific composer has not always helped modern-day appreciation of him, but he is more properly remembered as one of the most respected musicians of his time, with an international standing which outstripped that of one friend, Bach, and matched that of another, Handel.

_{Profile by Lindsay Kemp}