Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV1068

The suite opens with an Overture in the grand French style: a slow, stately introduction with sharp, dotted rhythms, followed by a faster, fugue-like section where instruments chase the same melodic idea in turn, then a return to the opening's stately tread.

Air (often called "Air on the G String" in a later arrangement) follows. The trumpets and drums fall silent, leaving strings alone for a long, arching melody over a steadily walking bass line. It is the piece's emotional center and the reason many listeners come to know this suite at all.

Gavotte I and II are a pair of moderate, skipping dances in a strong two-beat pattern. The first gavotte returns after the second, framing a contrast between a fuller and a lighter texture.

Bourree is a quick, bouncing dance in duple time, its phrases beginning on an offbeat that gives it a forward lean.

Gigue closes the suite as a brisk, leaping dance in a lilting triple meter, bringing back the trumpets and drums for a bright, festive finish.

Bach wrote his four orchestral suites, sometimes called overtures after their opening movements, for the courtly entertainments and civic concerts of his time, likely drawing on his years directing the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig during the 1720s and 1730s. Suite No. 3 survives in a set of parts copied around 1731, scored for strings, two oboes, three trumpets, and timpani, an ensemble suited to festive occasions. The individual dance movements descend from French court dance forms that had become standard concert fare across Europe by Bach's day. The suite's second movement, the Air, later became widely known through violinist August Wilhelm's 19th-century arrangement for violin and piano, "Air on the G String," which introduced the melody to audiences far beyond the concert hall.