On Bach’s autograph fair copy of the Sonatas and Partitas he calls them ‘Six Solos for violin without bass accompaniment’. They were completed in 1720, the date Bach added beneath his signature on the title page, though it is likely that he had been working on them before then. These magnificent pieces stand as one of the greatest monuments of Baroque instrumental music, but it is worth considering some of the precursors that might have inspired him – all works with which Bach was almost certainly familiar. First, a suite for solo violin without bass and a set of six partitas by Johann Paul von Westhoff (1656–1705), the movements based on dance forms, making extensive use of ‘multiple-stops’ (playing more than one string at the same time) to create the illusion of a solo instrument in dialogue with itself. Westhoff spent his last few years as a violinist at the court in Weimar where Bach met him in 1703, and this encounter may well have given Bach the idea of trying something similar. The unaccompanied Passacaglia which Heinrich Biber (1644–1704) composed as an epilogue to his Rosary Sonatas in about 1676 could well have provided a model (particularly for the Chaconne of the D minor Partita), and Biber’s pupil Johann Joseph Vilsmaÿr (1663–1722) published a set of Six Partitas for solo violin in 1715. In 1717, Vivaldi’s pupil Johann Georg Pisendel (1687–1755) showed Bach his Sonata for solo violin without bass – and later performed Bach’s sonatas and partitas.

The overall design of Bach’s Six Solos alternates Sonatas with Partitas. Each Sonata is in four movements, with a slow opening movement followed by a faster fugue. The finales are characterised by fast, continuous writing full of the kind of kinetic energy that fuels so much of Bach’s music. The third movements are more varied – and each is in a different key from the rest of the sonata. In the First Sonata (in G minor), Bach’s third movement is a gently lilting Siciliano in B flat major. But some of Bach’s most innovative writing in this work is to be found in the fugue (second movement), a marvel of ingenuity which demands from the player a combination of virtuosity and musical insight: Bach was writing here for extremely skilled musicians and may have played the Sonata and Partitas himself (he was a fine violinist as well as a superb keyboard player). There’s a brilliant kind of musical conjuring trick involved in the fugue: the violin is essentially a melodic instrument intended to play a single line, but here, through the use of double-stops and incredibly ingenious part-writing, Bach presents two or more musical lines at once. The result is a compositional sleight of hand with the violin functioning as more than one part, sometimes supported by bass lines that it also supplies itself. The G minor Sonata demonstrates Bach’s ability to create music of the greatest imagination within quite a strict, formal structure: at its most expressive in the first and third movements (Adagio and Siciliana), at its most technically brilliant (and demanding) in the fugue, and at its most energetic and direct in the Presto finale.

Nigel Simeone © 2024 

Written for the renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin, Hungarian composer Béla Bartók’s (1881-1945) Sonata for Solo Violin is widely considered one of the most challenging and expressive works for the instrument. It sits well in this programme, inspired, as it was, by Menhuin’s performance of Bach’s solo violin sonatas. Indeed, Bartók blends elements of the Baroque – the striking triple- and quadruple ‘stops’ of the opening, for example, in which the violinist plays three or four notes simultaneously – with the composer’s signature folk-inspired melodies; angular, sometimes discordant tunes drawn from the folk traditions of Eastern Europe, for which he is perhaps best known. The Sonata is in four movements: the intense and lyrical Tempo di ciaccona, the haunting Fuga, the delicate Melodia, and the virtuosic Presto. Each movement explores the violin’s capabilities, demanding both technical mastery and profound musicality.

The Partitas are very different in terms of their structures. While each is, broadly speaking, a suite of dances, Bach treats this idea with considerable freedom. The First Partita presents four dances – Allemanda, Corrente, Sarabande and Tempo di borea (i.e. Bourée) – but each of them is followed by a ‘Double’, a kind of variation which Bach uses either to create contrast (as in the Allemanda and Corrente) or to intensify a particular mood, something he does to memorable effect in the Sarabande and its ‘double’, or to create still greater musical momentum, as in the Tempo di borea and its double.  

After Bach’s death, a few expert performers continued to play the Sonatas and Partitas from manuscript copies, notably Haydn’s friend Johann Peter Salomon. The whole collection was published for the first time in 1802. In the nineteenth century, Mendelssohn and Schumann both felt the need to ‘enhance’ Bach’s original by adding piano accompaniments. Joseph Joachim was perhaps the first great virtuoso since Salomon to present Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas in concerts, and even in the recording studio (some extraordinarily evocative records from 1903). Thanks to Joachim’s efforts and those of his successors such as Georges Enescu, the Sonatas and Partitas finally came to be recognised as creative pinnacles of the violin repertoire. 

Nigel Simeone © 2024