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 there were earlier unaccompanied violin pieces that may have inspired Bach to write his own: in particular, the six partitas by Johann Paul von Westhoff (1656–1705); the unaccompanied Passacaglia which Heinrich Biber (1644–1704) composed as an epilogue to his Rosary Sonatas in about 1676; and the six partitas by Biber’s pupil Johann Joseph Vilsmaÿr (1663–1722), published in 1715.  

The Second Sonata is in four movements, with a slow opening movement followed by a faster fugue. The finale is characterised by fast, continuous writing full of the kind of kinetic energy that fuels so much of Bach’s music, while the third movement is a flowing Andante in C major. Some of Bach’s most innovative writing is to be found in the fugue – a marvel of ingenuity that also allows players to demonstrate virtuosity. Bach was writing for players of the greatest skill: he may have performed them himself and it is known that Johann Georg Pisendel – one of the finest players of the age – also performed Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas. There’s a brilliant kind of musical sleight-of-hand involved in the fugue: the violin is essentially an instrument designed to play a single melodic line, but here Bach requires the violin to play two or more lines at once, sometimes supported by bass lines that it also supplies itself.  

The Second Partita, in D minor, begins with an Allemanda that sets quite an austere tone and is notable for its absence of multiple-stopping. The Corrente that follows is largely unadorned, as is the fourth movement, a Gigue. However, in the third, a Sarabanda, Bach produces rich chordal writing (including quadruple-stopping) which provides not only a complete contrast of tempo and mood, but also of instrumental texture. But the pinnacle of the Second Partita is its closing Ciaconna (Chaconne) – aptly described by Nicholas Anderson as ‘a veritable Goliath of the violin repertory, built on a noble and declamatory theme.’ This broad and imposing initial idea is then treated to no fewer than sixty-four developing variations which seem to explore every possible facet of the theme with apparently effortless brilliance, the character of the music changing constantly (including an extended section in D major), before finally returning to the opening idea, and ending on two repeated Ds, finishing this mighty structure with the same two notes as the whole Partita began.   

After Bach’s death one notable exponent of these works was Haydn’s friend Johann Peter Salomon (1745–1815). Johann Friedrich Reichardt recalled Salomon in 1774 playing ‘the splendid solos without accompaniment by Seb. Bach, in which the setting is often developed in two or three parts, but also in one voice delightfully invented, so that any further accompaniment seems superfluous.’ The fugue from the Second Sonata that was the first movement to appear in print, published in 1798 as one of the examples in Jean-Baptiste Cartier’s L’Art du violon. The whole collection appeared for the first time in 1802, issued by the Bonn firm of Simrock. For most of the nineteenth century violinists regarded these works as technical exercises, until Joseph Joachim presented the Sonatas and Partitas in concerts, and even in the recording studio – in 1903, he made records of several movements that are extraordinarily evocative. It was largely thanks to Joachim’s efforts that the Sonatas and Partitas finally came to be recognised as one of the creative pinnacles of the violin repertory.