From 1717 to 1723, Bach was director of music at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen, north of Leipzig. He liked his job. His employer, Prince Leopold, was a well-educated man, 24 years old at the time he engaged Bach. (Bach was 32.) Leopold was fond of travel and books and paintings, but his real passion was music. He was an accomplished musician who not only played violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord well enough to join with the professionals in his house orchestra, but he also had an exceptional bass voice. Leopold started the court musical establishment in 1707 with three players (his puritanical father had no use for music), and by the time of Bach’s appointment it had grown to nearly twenty performers equipped with a fine set of instruments. It was for this group that Bach wrote many of his outstanding instrumental works, including the Brandenburg Concertos, Orchestral Suites, Violin Concertos and much of his chamber music. Leopold appreciated Bach’s genius (his annual salary as Court Conductor was 400 thalers, equal to that of the Court Marshal, Leopold’s second highest official), and Bach returned the compliment when he said of his Prince, “He loved music, he was well acquainted with it, he understood it.”
Bach composed the sets of three sonatas and three partitas for unaccompanied violin before 1720, the date on the manuscript. Though there is not a letter, preface, contemporary account or shred of any other documentary evidence extant to shed light on the genesis and purpose of these pieces, the technical demands they impose upon the player indicate that they were intended for a virtuoso performer: Johann Georg Pisendel, a student of Vivaldi, Jean Baptiste Volumier, leader of the Dresden court orchestra, and Joseph Spiess, concertmaster of the Cöthen orchestra, have been advanced as possible candidates.
After the introduction of the basso continuo early in the 17th century, it had been the seldom-broken custom to supply a work for solo instrument with keyboard accompaniment, so the tradition behind Bach’s solo violin sonatas and partitas is slight. Johann Paul von Westhoff, a violinist at Weimar when Bach played in the orchestra there in 1703, published a set of six unaccompanied partitas in 1696, and Heinrich Biber, Johann Jakob Walther and Pisendel all composed similar works. All of these composers were active in and around Dresden. Bach visited Dresden shortly before assuming his post at Cöthen, and he may well have become familiar at that time with most of this music. (Bach’s reputation as a peerless keyboard virtuoso preceded him on his visit to Dresden in 1717: the French organist and clavecin player Louis Marchand fled town rather than be beaten in a contest arranged by a local nobleman.) Though Bach may have found models and inspiration in the music of his predecessors, his works for unaccompanied violin far surpass any others in technique and musical quality.
Sonata No. 1 in G minor, BWV 1001
The three solo violin sonatas follow the precedent of the serious “church sonata,” the sonata di chiesa, deriving their mood and makeup from the works of the influential Roman master Arcangelo Corelli. The sonatas follow the standard four-movement disposition of the sonata da chiesa — slow–fast–slow–fast — though Bach replaced the first quick movements with elaborate fugues and suggested a certain dance-like buoyancy in the finales. The Sonata No. 1 in G minor opens with a deeply expressive Adagio whose mood of stern solemnity is heightened by considerable chromaticism and harmonic piquancy. The four-voice Fugue that follows appealed sufficiently to Bach that he transcribed it for both organ (BWV 539) and lute (BWV 1000). The G minor Sonata concludes with a lilting Siciliano and a moto perpetuo movement in two-part dance form.
Partita No. 1 in B minor, BWV 1002
Though the three violin partitas vary in style, they are all examples of the sonata da camera (“chamber sonata”), or suite of dances. The First Partita, in B minor, is unusual in that each of its four movements (Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and Bourrée) is followed by a Double, an elaborate variation around the harmonic skeleton of the preceding dance. The Allemande was a moderately paced dance that originated in Germany in the 16th century. French composers found it useful for displaying their most elaborate keyboard ornamentations, and passed it back to German musicians in that highly decorated form. The Courante was an old court dance type accompanied by jumping motions that was frequently paired with the smoothly flowing Allemande. When the Sarabande emigrated to Spain from its birthplace in Mexico in the 16th century, it was so wild in its motions and so lascivious in its implications that Cervantes ridiculed it and Philip II suppressed it. The dance became considerably more tame when it was taken over into French and English music during the following century, and it had achieved the dignified manner in which it was known to Bach by 1700. The Bourrée was a French folk dance that was adopted by the court as early as the 16th century.
Sonata No. 2 in A minor, BWV 1003
The opening Grave of the Sonata No. 2 in A minor is a rhapsodic flight of sweeping scales frequently interrupted by double stops whose chromatically inflected harmonies heighten the music’s touching expression. The progress of the elaborate and precisely planned Fugue (Bach’s audacity at composing a fugue for just the four strings of a solo violin is justified by the superbly satisfying result that he achieved) is leavened by episodes of single-line melodic writing. The following Andante in C major, reminiscent in its ineffable blend of strength and wistfulness of the well-known “Air on the G String” from the Third Orchestral Suite (BWV 1068), is built from a long-limbed theme spun above a regularly pulsing bass line. The closing Allegro eschews double-stopping in favor of a moto perpetuo unfolding of briskly moving melodic material.
Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004
The Second Partita follows the customary sequence of dances, each in two repeated parts, that comprise the Baroque suite: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and Gigue (an English folk dance). In context, however, these four movements seem little more than a preface to the wondrous closing Chaconne, one of the most sublime pieces Bach ever created. The chaconne is an ancient variations form in which a short, repeated chord pattern is decorated with changing figurations and elaborations. Bach subjected his eight-measure theme to 64 continuous variations, beginning and ending in D minor but modulating in the center section to a luminous D major. The grandeur of vision of this music has inspired several musicians to set it for various ensembles, including Mendelssohn’s addition of a piano accompaniment for an 1840 performance by Ferdinand David, his concertmaster at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and Joachim Raff’s version for full orchestra. None of these arrangements, however, is as satisfactory as the original, because, as Bach’s early-19th-century biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, long ago realized, the essence of these unaccompanied violin works is Bach’s mastery of writing in one part so that it is impossible to add another — melodically, harmonically and even contrapuntally, these works are perfect and complete just as they are.
Of the Chaconne, Philipp Spitta wrote, “From the grave majesty of the beginning to the thirty-second notes which rush up and down like the very demons; from the tremulous arpeggios that hang almost motionless, like veiling clouds above a dark ravine ... to the devotional beauty of the D major section, where the evening sun sets in a peaceful valley: the spirit of the master urges the instrument to incredible utterances. At the end of the D major section it sounds like an organ, and sometimes a whole band of violins seem to be playing. This Chaconne is a triumph of spirit over matter such as even Bach never repeated in a more brilliant manner.”
Sonata No. 3 in C major, BWV 1005
The opening Adagio of the Sonata No. 3 in C major, whose somber mood and dotted-rhythm tread recall the style of the French Overture, serves as a broad preface to the stupendous Fugue that follows. Bach borrowed the theme for this elaborate and precisely planned movement from the Pentecost antiphon Veni Sancte Spiritus (“Come Holy Ghost”), a favorite melody of his which also appears in two Chorale Preludes (BWV 651 and 652), the Cantatas Nos. 59 and 175, and the motet Der Geist hilft unsrer Schwachheit auf (BWV 226). The touching Largo, modest in its expression and dimensions, provides a foil for the grandeur of the preceding Fugue. The closing Allegro assai follows a two-part dance form.
Partita No. 3 in E major, BWV 1006
The Partita No. 3 in E major opens with a brilliant Preludio, which Bach later arranged as the introductory Sinfonia to his Cantata No. 29, Wir danken dir, Gott (“We Thank Thee, God”) of 1731. There follows a series of dances in bright tempos. The Loure was derived from a 17th-century country dance originally accompanied by rustic instruments. (“Loure” is an obsolete French name for the bagpipe.) The Gavotte en Rondeau posits an opening strophe, separated by sparkling episodes, that returns throughout the movement in the manner of the French rondo form. Next come a matched set of two Menuets, the most enduring of all Baroque dance forms. A Bourrée, enlivened by what Karl Geiringer called “puckish echo-effects,” and a rousing Gigue round out this most lighthearted of Bach’s works for unaccompanied violin.
©2025 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
