Bach: Alla breve à4 (BWV 589)

Bach’s Allabreve for organ, probably composed around 1705, though there is some doubt about its authorship, is in a deliberate old-fashioned style, very much that of the seventeenth century, to which the composer brings all his skill at combining contrapuntal complexity with expressive harmony.

Originally in D major, it has been transposed down to C in this arrangement, which otherwise follows the original quite closely, with only an occasional passage in the bass part transposed up an octave. We have provided two alternative bass parts: one for normal bass recorder in F, the other for a contrabass in C.