Bach French Suite BWV.817’s Performance Analysis

Johann Sebastian Bach’s "French Suite" BWV 817 has the most movements among the six French suites,and there are eight movements in the whole work.The entire suite consists of Allemande,Courante,Sarabande,Gavotte,Polonaise,Menuet,Bourree,and Gigue.Every single one of its short and delicate movement contains beautiful melody.And although this suite is labeled as a French Suite,the designations of "French" were not given by Bach and certainly following the thinking of Froberger and other German composers.These movements are technically challenging for performers to execute and require excellent finger independence.Currently the numbers of published study on French Suites in China are relatively low,especially for BWV.817.Most scholars tend to study the style of each dance,and the research on performance is not so thorough and complete.On the basis of previous researches,this paper gives a detailed description of the performance details of each dance piece,such as style,ornaments,timbre,touch,legato and staccato,pedal,speed,etc.Such analysis combined with the comparison of the performance versions of famous pianists,provide some valuable and innovative references for scholars who study Bach’s works to continue to study BWV817 in depth.