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When I was a young man studying Georges Gillet's Études pour l'Enseignement supérieur du Hautbois, I seriously took to heart the advice that the master gives at the very end of his additional essay entitled Quelques Conseils. It reads in translation as follows:

"To acquire good style, I advise playing Bach and Haendel's violin and flute sonatas with piano; also Bach's trios for two violins and piano and the concerto for two violins, admirable masterpieces which might have been specially written for our instrument."

To be sure these works were helpful, but I found the Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) very trying, mainly because most of their keys were too difficult to negotiate on the oboe. Also, many of them contain double stops and the like. It was during this same period of discovery that my brother Ernie was assigned one of Bach's Sonatas for Organ. Hearing the comments he made while practicing this work, I could only conclude that it must have been a killer for a young kid to play. To help him out, I would often take the top line so he could work out the left hand and pedal voices with greater ease. It was then that I realized that these trio sonatas had a future for oboe players.

When I joined the faculty of UMass in the late 1960's, the six Bach organ sonatas became standard fare on my oboe recitals; I took the top voice and an organist or harpsichordist, the lower two. On one recital I assigned the second voice to viola; the harpsichordist covered the lowest part with a realization of the harmony, and was joined by a cellist to form a continuo group.

It is in the latter context that I wish to present Sonata II; but instead of viola, cor anglais will be the second voice, and my realization for harpsichord will be strengthened with the addition of bassoon on the lower part. Indeed, this procedure has historical support for, in fact, the first movement of Sonata IV is also found as a sinfonia within the church cantata Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes, BWV 76 arranged for oboe d'amore, viola da gamba, and continuo. In addition, the central movement of Sonata III was utilized by Bach to create the slow movement for the Concerto for Flute, Violin, and Harpsichord, BWV 1044.

Sonata II in C Minor, BWV 526 is my personal favorite among the set of six. Its initial movement in ritornello form derives from Vivaldi's concerto style as does the fugue finale. The central slow movement is more-or-less indebted to the motet style of the late Baroque. In Bach's hands, though, we find masterful imitative lines motivated by rich harmonies which are driven forward by the continuo. This is one of the most glorious trio sonatas ever composed.