Bourrée in E Minor
J.S. Bach
Bach's famous Bourrée from his first lute suite, better known to guitarists as 'Bourrée in E minor', is an intermediate-level piece often transcribed for classical guitar. It's a typical example of Baroque-Period counterpoint with interdependent melodic lines in bass and treble parts. A bourrée is a kind of dance and music composed for them is in simple binary form, i.e., two repeated sections, often (as in this case) with the second section being considerably longer than the first and more varied in tonality. In this bourrée, which is very typical of the form, the first section starts in the key of E minor and modulates to the relative major key of G major at the end of the first section. The second section starts in the key of G major and makes its way back to E minor at the end, via some some other related keys that make a brief and musically interesting appearance.
Download Bach's Bourrée in E minor as a PDF file for offline viewing and printing.
bach-bourree_in_e_minor.pdf |