How to study Bach's French Suites?

[jlmap]

Hi! I'm an amateur pianist. I''vê being playing some sonatas from Mozart and Beethoven in the last years, and I feel I can make some sense of what I play. I'd like tô study Bachs suites, but Bach makes very little se se for me. I heard that in order tô understand it one have to know figured bass. I'm trying to understand the allemand in D minor, the first dance. I can see that it begins with i/viio/V7/i, and that after it the bass seems to go down by step all the octave. It seems that it begins with a d minor chord, then e diminished, than a minor, F major, than maybe b flat major and g minor. Is it the monte schema? Or maybe it is a lament from d tô A. How do you approach these works?

[pianistavt]

Not sure why you need a harmonic analysis of a piece to enjoy learning it ... but you can start here:

[quantum]

Learn these pieces as music first, just like any other piece.  Once you have a few under your belt, then you can begin to look at other aspects, such as harmonic analysis.  Watch out that you don't fall into the trap of analysis paralysis before you even give yourself the change to enjoy this music. 

[brogers70]

It's true that Baroque composers often used figured bass in their compositions and could easily fill in a continuo part from a figured bass line. That does not mean that you need to have those skills to play Baroque music. I think the main practical take away is just to recognize that Bach and his contemporaries thought a lot about bass lines, as much or more than they thought about melodies. So when you play their music, you just have to pay attention to the importance of the bass - feel where it's headed, shape the bass line, etc. Lots of movements of Bach Suites contain only a bass line and a soprano line; just make sure to pay as much attention to the bass as to the upper voice.

It's fun to learn how to read figured bass and to analyze the harmonies that come from it, but it's not necessary, at least at the beginning.