Duet No.2 in F major, BWV 803 (Bach)
Movements
Notes
The four duetti BWV 802–805, in the successive tonalities of E minor, F major, G major and A minor, were included at a fairly late stage in 1739 in the engraved plates for Clavier-Übung III. The second duet in F major BWV 803 is a fugue written in the form of a da capo aria, in the form ABA.
There is a sharp contrast between the two sections, which may be Bach’s musical response to the acrimonious debate on style being conducted between Scheibe and Birnbaum at the time of composition. Section A is a conventional fugue in the spirit of the Inventions and Sinfonias, melodious, harmonious and undemanding on the listener—the “natural” cantabile approach to composition advocated by both Mattheson and Scheibe. Section B is written in quite a different way. It is severe and chromatic, mostly in minor keys, with dissonances, strettos, syncopation and canonic writing—all features frowned upon as “artificial” and “unnatural” by Bach’s critics.
