French Suite No. 1 in D minor, II
French Suite No. 3 in B minor, I
Partita No. 1 in Bb major, I
Suite in E major for Lute, BWV 1006a, II
16-bar sentence
English Suite No. 4 in F major, I
14-bar antecedent + continuation (but A = 36 bars!)
Suite in A major for Violin, BWV 1025
Of the five 16-bar themes, three have sentences in their first 8-bar units, two have periods.
16-bar period
French Suite No. 1 in D minor, II. The 8-bar consequent is close to the antecedent in its basic progression and figures, but Bach does work in a number of embellishing variants (and a bit of invertible counterpoint: compare bars 5 and 12).
French Suite No. 3 in B minor, I. Here the 8-bar consequent is a literal repetition of the antecedent except in the cadence.
Partita No. 1 in Bb major, I. This sort of dense motivic play within the sentence design undoubtedly fascinated the early Romantics.
Suite in E major for Lute, BWV 1006a, II. Alterations in the 8-bar consequent begin immediately after the repetition of the basic idea (earlier than in the preceding Partita menuet) in service of the modulation.
16-bar sentence
English Suite No. 4 in F major, I. Compound sentences are not common in any era, compared to the 16-bar and even 32-bar period. This example is even more remarkable in that the 8-bar presentation is a period. (Yes, I have on several occasions objected to Caplin's confusing repurposing of the terms for 8-bar themes to map onto 16-bar themes. I have yet to come up with anything better, however.)
14-bar antecedent + continuation (but A = 36 bars!)
Suite in A major for Violin, BWV 1025. This is of an entirely different order from the other 27 pieces Bach named "menuet." Obviously an expanded instrumental concert piece in the Italian manner, it offers us only one point for comparison -- its opening, which I have read as a 14-bar antecedent + continuation theme. The intertwining of the treble parts makes the articulations hard to find, and I have relied substantially on the bass, whose figures--boxed--are quite clear as 8 + 6 bars. In the first half of the antecedent (bars 1-4) the two treble voices are almost in unison, as one might expect in the tutti sections of an Italian concerto. At bar 5 they break apart in the manner of the concertino, with the principal melody in the keyboard (see the arrow). The cadence articulation is largely concealed by the overlapping figures: the violin's long note in bar 7 suggests an ending there, but it is contradicted by the seventh (D5) in the other treble part; in bar 8, the keyboard line finishes (D5 resolving to C#5, B5 to A5), while the violin simultaneously leads into the next bar as a pickup.
