Angloise in D Major by J.C.F. Bach

[1piano4joe]

Hi all,

This pieces is listed as a Baroque List A piece in the RCM grade 5 syllabus. However, several other sources list it as a Classical piece. For example, in "The Festival Collection" book 4 which is compiled and edited by Helen Marlais, this piece is listed as Classical there.

Many sources list J.C.F. Bach as a Classical period composer. I did find a source that said, "He made a successful transition from the late Baroque style into the early Classical style."

I haven't encountered this before but I'm guessing this "crossover" isn't all that unusual.

I have played both Baroque and Classical pieces and yet am somewhat confused by this piece but never mind me. I thought published sources, naively perhaps, would at least get it right.

The same composer appears in the RCM grade 5 List B (Classical pieces) for composing the Allegretto in F Major!

So, was the Angloise written in a Baroque style and the Allegretto in F Major in a Classical style?

The piece does have ornamentation suggesting Baroque. There is neither an Alberti bass nor long scale passages in the right hand but the form confuses me. It's neither binary nor rounded binary.

This Baroque piece has a Trio? I haven't seen that before. The key signature is different in the Trio Section too. Also, the dyads found in the Trio suggest Classical. I've seen this many times in Sonatinas!

I learned 2 Beethoven German dances. They had Trios but they were Classical and not Baroque.  

Is this some sort of ambiguous piece? I suppose a piece could conceivably be composed with elements of both Baroque and Classical styling. This might explain the dichotomy in the published sources where the editors were compelled to make a choice.

So, is this piece Baroque or Classical? And why?








 

[chopinlover01]

Chances are that that particular work falls on the latter half of what they're defining as "classical", which might just be based on years. That said, your teacher might know more about this, and you could ask her I don't intend to cop out, I just want to list other sources of info.
Cheers!

[mjames]

That's the thing about transitional composers, it isn't one or the either. The common case for musicians is that they are nurtured in a particular style(s), and as they live out the rest of their lives, they are exposed to other types and in some cases musical ideas, and because of this they might incorporate both the old and contemporary techniques. The thing with transitional composers however, they lived in a time period of extreme shifts in schools of thought and practice, and as a consequence they end up incorporating ideas that are representative of two different eras of music.

It is precisely why we don't consider Schubert, or John Field as either classical or romantic composers. They were the "bridges" between both eras of music. The case might be the same for this composer, both baroque and classical: a transitional composer.

[chopinlover01]

While I agree with you conceptually, many grade boards will label them as one or the other. Beethoven is perhaps the greatest example of a transitional composer; his middle period to late period work is dripping with romanticism, but in most exam boards, he's considered completely classical.

[hardy_practice]

More likely in the Galant style.