Air on the G String

The Air is the second movement of Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D, BWV 1068, which he probably put together in Leipzig around 1730 for the Collegium Musicum, the student orchestra that played in Zimmermann's coffee house. The suite around it is loud and festive, with trumpets and drums. The Air drops all of that for strings alone: a long singing line in the first violins over a bass that walks in even steps under it.

The name Air on the G String goes back to 1871. That year the violinist August Wilhelmj arranged it for violin and piano, moved it down a ninth into C, and set the melody so the soloist could play the whole thing on the violin's lowest string. His version made the piece famous in concert halls and gave it the name everyone uses, which is why this page carries it. The notes here are Bach's own, in his key of D.

Bach's line is made of held notes that swell and then break into quick turns just before the harmony moves. This page writes the whole movement at doubled note values, so a bar here is half a bar of the score and the turns read as eighth notes. A few of the quickest figures are trimmed to fit, each to the notes that carry its shape. Both halves are here, and both repeat.

In D the Air sits almost entirely on the A and E courses, with one climb to the C at the eighth fret near the end. A mandolin cannot hold a note the way a violin bow does, so the long notes want a slow tremolo that starts soft and grows, the way the strings swell into them. The turns have to come out of the tremolo cleanly and go back in without a gap. Take it at 60 until the tremolo stays even through the whole of the long notes, then let it breathe.