THE KEYBOARD SUITE in A Minor is a relatively early work. According to David Schulenberg, it “seems to occupy a stylistic position between the English Suites and the First French Suite,” though it may well have been written much earlier. It exists in two versions, BWV 818 and 818a, both transmitted to us through copies. The earlier version is preserved in two copies, one in the hand of his student, Heinrich Nicolas Gerber, the other anonymous, both dating from the early 1720s. This version consists of five movements: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande simple, its Double, and Gigue. The later version (818a) adds a Prelude, marked “Fort gai,” and in place of the original Sarabande–Double pair provides a variant of the Sarabande simple and a Menuet. This version is based on two surviving copies dated much later, around 1740. The following discussion focuses on this later version.

The movements of BWV 818a are related in a variety of ways and at multiple levels. With the exception of the Prelude and the Allemande, each movement opens with a variant of a common underlying pitch motive, the arpeggiation of the tonic triad (a1–c2–e2), most frequently with decoration of the tonic by its lower neighbor note, g#1, and the fifth by its upper neighbor, f 2. The initial bars of all movements but the Allemande are reproduced in figure 5.1. Each of these ideas, though based on a common underlying pitch motive, is unique, expressing its own character. Still the connecting thread is there, and this thread becomes more pronounced when we examine the voice-leading of the opening phrases of these movements. As shown in figure 5.2, four of them—the Prelude, Sarabande, Menuet, and Gigue—open with harmonized descents of a sixth from e2 to g#1. The Courante differs only in that its opening phrase is harmonically closed, supporting a descent of a fifth from e2 to a1. Note the employment of f2 at various levels as a local neighbor note, complete or incomplete, harmonized or unharmonized, and in one instance (the Menuet) extended over several bars.