Best known to his contemporaries as a virtuoso on the organ and harpsichord, Bach was also a better-than-average violinist and violist. He learned to play the violin as a child—probably under the tutelage of his father, a town piper in Eisenach—and kept it up for the rest of his life. This dual ability was surely a factor in Bach’s first major appointment as Kapellmeister, or director of music, to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen in 1717. In the words of a later court composer in Cöthen, the prince “was a great connoisseur and champion of music; he himself played the violin not badly and sang a good bass.” Thanks to Leopold’s interest and generosity, Bach had at his disposal a group of some sixteen expert instrumentalists who inspired not only the six Brandenburg Concertos but also his great unaccompanied works for violin and cello. The autograph score of the six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin is dated 1720, but scholars believe that some of the music was composed during Bach’s previous appointment as court organist in Weimar.

According to his composer-son Carl Philipp Emanuel, Bach played the violin “clearly and penetratingly.” Although it’s unlikely that his technique was equal to the daunting challenges posed by his own music for the instrument, one can readily imagine the composer methodically working out intricate passages on his fine violin by Jacob Stainer, a leading luthier of the Baroque period. Bach’s solos are a virtual encyclopedia of eighteenth-century violin technique; no composer, before or since, has explored the instrument’s expressive capabilities more comprehensively than he did. C.P.E. Bach told his father’s biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel that Bach “understood to perfection the possibilities of all stringed instruments.” The younger Bach quoted an eminent violinist of the time as saying that “he had seen nothing more perfect for learning to be a good violinist, and could suggest nothing better to anyone eager to learn,” than the Sonatas and Partitas.

A number of German and Italian composers had written music for solo violin in the seventeenth century, but never on the scale that Bach attempted. Nor had anyone achieved such breathtaking contrapuntal and harmonic complexity with a single melodic instrument. As Forkel observed in 1802, Bach “has so combined in a single part all the notes required to make the modulations complete that a second part is neither necessary nor desirable.” This perceptive advice was ignored by Mendelssohn and Schumann, who fleshed Bach’s solos out with superfluous and often jarringly anachronistic keyboard accompaniments. Nineteenth-century editions of the Sonatas and Partitas by famous violinists like Ferdinand David and Joseph Joachim were similarly romanticized to varying degrees. It was David who apparently introduced Bach’s solos to the public: in 1840 he played the great Chaconne from the D-minor Partita in Leipzig, with Mendelssohn at the piano. Twelve-year-old Joachim followed suit at his debut in 1844, offering a pair of movements from one of sonatas, and it was largely through his subsequent efforts that the Sonatas and Partitas became part of the standard repertoire. As a result, generations of violinists have revered Bach’s works for unaccompanied violin as a kind of Bible, a seminal text offering both spiritual sustenance and musical instruction.

Like the six Suites for solo cello, the Sonatas and Partitas (three of each) combine elements of didactic and entertainment music; indeed, early editions identified them as studies or exercises. In the Partitas, Bach adopted the flexible format of the Baroque chamber sonata or sonata da camera. Both that term and the word partita (which translates as “little part” or “division”) referred to a suite of stylized instrumental dances, typically including a stately allemande, a vivacious courante, a broadly lyrical sarabande, and a bouncy gigue. However, the genre gave composers considerable leeway, and in the Partita No. 3 Bach dispensed with all but the last of the four core movements.

Both the bright major key and the preponderance of up-tempo dances in the E-major Partita give it a markedly sunny disposition. The opening Preludio, with its sparkling profusion of sixteenth notes, has long been a popular showpiece for violinists. (The Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate made a dazzling recording at the turn of the twentieth century that has to be heard to be believed; on one occasion he is said to have gotten so carried away in his devil-may-care display of pyrotechnics that he lost his bearings and detoured into an etude by a different composer.) The Loure, a kind of slow, lumbering gigue in 6/4 time, brings the high-flying violinist back down to earth. The ensuing Gavotte en Rondeau is more formal in both mood and structure, its genial eight-bar theme alternating with four contrasting episodes of varying length, character, and complexity. A pair of elegant Menuets, the second of which features a wonderful droning imitation of a bagpipe, leads to a crisply syncopated Bourrée and a short, rhythmically buoyant Gigue.

© 2021 Harry Haskell

Alone Together is commissioned and produced by ARCO Collaborative with the support of commissioning partners National YoungArts Foundation and additional generous donors.

Best known to his contemporaries as a virtuoso on the organ and harpsichord, Bach was also a better-than-average violinist and violist. He learned to play the violin as a child—probably under the tutelage of his father, a town piper in Eisenach—and kept it up for the rest of his life. This dual ability was surely a factor in Bach’s first major appointment as Kapellmeister, or director of music, to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen in 1717. In the words of a later court composer in Cöthen, the prince “was a great connoisseur and champion of music; he himself played the violin not badly and sang a good bass.” Thanks to Leopold’s interest and generosity, Bach had at his disposal a group of some sixteen expert instrumentalists who inspired not only the six Brandenburg Concertos but also his great unaccompanied works for violin and cello. The autograph score of the six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin is dated 1720, but scholars believe that some of the music was composed during Bach’s previous appointment as court organist in Weimar.

According to his composer-son Carl Philipp Emanuel, Bach played the violin “clearly and penetratingly.” Although it’s unlikely that his technique was equal to the daunting challenges posed by his own music for the instrument, one can readily imagine the composer methodically working out intricate passages on his fine violin by Jacob Stainer, a leading luthier of the Baroque period. Bach’s solos are a virtual encyclopedia of eighteenth-century violin technique; no composer, before or since, has explored the instrument’s expressive capabilities more comprehensively than he did. C.P.E. Bach told his father’s biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel that Bach “understood to perfection the possibilities of all stringed instruments.” The younger Bach quoted an eminent violinist of the time as saying that “he had seen nothing more perfect for learning to be a good violinist, and could suggest nothing better to anyone eager to learn,” than the Sonatas and Partitas.

A number of German and Italian composers had written music for solo violin in the seventeenth century, but never on the scale that Bach attempted. Nor had anyone achieved such breathtaking contrapuntal and harmonic complexity with a single melodic instrument. As Forkel observed in 1802, Bach “has so combined in a single part all the notes required to make the modulations complete that a second part is neither necessary nor desirable.” This perceptive advice was ignored by Mendelssohn and Schumann, who fleshed Bach’s solos out with superfluous and often jarringly anachronistic keyboard accompaniments. Nineteenth-century editions of the Sonatas and Partitas by famous violinists like Ferdinand David and Joseph Joachim were similarly romanticized to varying degrees. It was David who apparently introduced Bach’s solos to the public: in 1840 he played the great Chaconne from the D-minor Partita in Leipzig, with Mendelssohn at the piano. Twelve-year-old Joachim followed suit at his debut in 1844, offering a pair of movements from one of sonatas, and it was largely through his subsequent efforts that the Sonatas and Partitas became part of the standard repertoire. As a result, generations of violinists have revered Bach’s works for unaccompanied violin as a kind of Bible, a seminal text offering both spiritual sustenance and musical instruction.

In contrast to the partitas, Bach’s three solo sonatas mimic the structure of the four-movement church sonata (sonata da chiesa) promulgated some years earlier by Arcangelo Corelli. In outline, it consisted of a slow, majestic introduction followed by a fast movement in fugal style, a lyrical interlude, and a brilliant finale. The opening Adagio of the C-major Sonata features a quietly insistent thematic motive—a repeated oscillating figure in dotted rhythm that wanders imperturbably from register to register, its stately progress interrupted by an occasional flourish. Bach takes a placid chorale melody for his theme in the second movement. It soon becomes apparent, however, that this fugue has not one but two subjects; it is, in fact, a double fugue, and its intricate design and monumental proportions—Jennifer Koh calls it “a complex musical testament of human potential”—make it a tour de force for both composer and performer. After these heroic exertions the violinist deserves a rest, and Bach provides one in the Largo, a lyrical and richly expressive meditation in F major. The concluding Allegro assai is brisk and businesslike, characterized by propulsive motor rhythms, lengthy sequences (the same music played at different pitches), and showy bariolages (a technique in which the player moves rapidly between static and changing notes).

© 2021 Harry Haskell