In the early 1720s, a pedagogical impulse began to flourish in Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) prompted by the needs of his immediate family. The Bachs were living in Köthen, the Calvinist court in which instrumental music figured so largely. Two sons, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philip Emanuel, born in 1710 and 1714 respectively, were ready for new musical challenges. Also, as a widower, Bach had remarried in 1721 to Anna Magdalena Wilcke, a talented 20-year-old soprano. With these pupils in mind, he created early drafts of numerous keyboard works, including preludes and fugues destined for The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Inventions and Sinfonias, as well as the majority of his French Suites. Of the six suites eventually completed and grouped together, five appear in the Notebook for Anna Magdalena that Bach began compiling in 1722.

Around the same time, Bach also produced a series of incredible works for solo violin and solo cello. The former – three Sonatas and three Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin – may originate from Bach’s time in Weimar a decade earlier. However, it is likely that contact with a prominent violin virtuoso active in Köthen (perhaps Johann Georg Pisendel or Joseph Spiess) brought opportunity together with inspiration.

Beyond the solo works for violin, Bach also created a set of ensemble Sonatas for Harpsichord and Violin. Although no firm evidence exists to date these duo sonatas precisely, a consensus points toward Bach’s final years at Köthen. Hearing them today side by side with works for solo violin and solo keyboard allows us to appreciate the rich variety Bach managed to find in these two instruments. His duo sonatas are not merely a combination of harpsichord music and violin music, as if 1+1 simply equals 2. (As we will see, 1+1 actually equals 3.) Each genre stands uniquely on its own, and we are rewarded for opening our ears to the different ways Bach approaches solo keyboard, solo violin, and keyboard-violin duets.


Sonata in G Major for Harpsichord and Violin, BWV 1019

The earliest surviving edition of the Sonatas for Harpsichord and Violin dates from 1725 and is in the hand of Bach’s nephew. With that copy providing a terminus ante quem, it is probable that the sonatas attained their final form around 1720-1723. Newly-arrived in Leipzig in 1723, Bach could pull out such music to help fill diverse needs in the hectic early days of his new job creating weekly cantatas and teaching Latin to the young choristers.

What sets this collection apart from hundreds of contemporaneous violin sonatas? In a word, texture. Bach decisively departs from the earlier tradition that gave prominence to the violin solo. Traditionally such works were written for violin with accompanying “continuo”: a bass line with notated figures that every keyboardist would realize to his or her own liking. In that way, the continuo player’s contribution seems analogous to the muted background landscape behind a radiant visage of the Mona Lisa. The backdrop is necessary, of course, but of subsidiary interest. This situation changes entirely in Bach’s collection.

From his title for the collection (Six Sonatas for Obbligato Harpsichord and Violin Solo) down to every page in the score, the keyboard enjoys full partnership with the violin. These are Trio Sonatas in all but name: music conceived for three voices in which attention shifts periodically between all three as a conversation among equals. The three voices here correspond to the violinist, keyboardist’s right-hand, and keyboardist’s left-hand. The left hand still plays a vital role as the foundation of the harmonic structure. But the figured bass is gone, replaced by a fully written-out keyboard part that interweaves with the violin to create a new tapestry of sound.

Bach continued to revise these duo sonatas in later years, none more so than Sonata No. 6 in G Major. It exists in three distinct versions. Its final form dates from the 1730s, perhaps even as late as 1741. At the beginning it may have started as a three-movement keyboard concerto. The opening Allegro is in the familiar concerto form with alternation of loud-soft effects and interplay of violin and harpsichord (including parts where one or the other voice drops out in cadenza-like fashion). This movement sounds very much like a Vivaldi transcription, of which Bach made many. The succeeding movements changed drastically in his conception over the years. He retained the E-minor Largo for second position but excised various ensemble and solo movements to produce the final five-movement structure as we know it today. It keeps features of older styles in the Allegro/Allemande for solo keyboard and contrapuntal Adagio. But the freshness of the finale reminds us what Bach has achieved in this collection: a true partnership between the violin (traditionally the soloist) and harpsichord (now having outgrown its purely supporting role), creating a repertoire of robust trio sonatas.


French Suite No. 4 in E-Flat Major for keyboard, BWV 815

The designation “French Suites,” descriptive as it may seem, probably misleads more than informs. One could argue that the most specifically French feature is the style of ornamentation. But apart from the concluding Gigue in Suite No. 1, there are no French Overture movements, and the dances are more often Italian in character. Bach himself never called the suites “French.” That task fell to posterity, which applied the label to distinguish them from Bach’s other keyboard collections. During his lifetime they were referred to as the Little Suites; the grander English Suites and Italian Partitas are rather more ambitious in scale and difficulty. The French Suites charm through subtlety and melodic beauty, favoring refinement over display. Well, perhaps they truly are French after all!

Among the smaller suites, No. 4 in E-flat major nevertheless features some of the composer’s best music. The opening Allemande, which opens quite low in register, is a personal favorite. The warmth of E-flat major and frequent tonal motion toward the flat keys create an inviting mood – relaxed, unhurried, improvisatory. A vigorous sense returns momentarily with the jaunty Courante, but the Sarabande restores the initial calm. Bach’s added dances (a Gavotte and Air) bookend a simple Menuet. All three move briskly and quickly through to the final Gigue, in which the A and B sections, respectively, build counterpoint around a main theme and its inversion. This suite succeeds equally well with seasoned performers, scholars, and music lovers. Just the right touch of sophistication and compositional intricacy, just the right balance of introspection and verve; in a word – and a French one at that – it has élan.

Partita No. 2 in D Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV 1004
Certain forms seem to evoke a particular time in music history: the fugue in Germany’s Baroque era, symphonies in 18th-century Austria, art song in the 19th century. Like fugue, the chaconne developed primarily during the Baroque period, though its origins go back earlier. Also like fugue, chaconne is both a form and a compositional technique. Also known by its Italian name, ciaccona, chaconne is a variation form at heart. It likely started as a popular dance in Spanish colonies of Latin American during the 16th century. The earliest extant examples are in triple meter and a brusque major mode. Eventually the dance made its way to Europe; Spain and Italy developed a distinct passion for it in the late 1600s. Repetition of a basic chord progression, made necessary by the dance’s repetition of certain steps, gave the chaconne a life of its own beyond dance. Composers from Monteverdi to Lully wrote chaconnes both in balletic situations and in more abstract or “pure” musical settings.

Many listeners today will recognize the massive Ciaccona that concludes J. S. Bach’s Partita in D minor for solo violin. Even though this famous movement can stand on its own very well, it is only the last of five wonderful sections in Bach’s D-Minor Partita. The opening Allemande is grand in scale. Both this movement and the following Corrente benefit from rhythmic variety, whereby angular four-square figures rub shoulders with softer, rounded triplets. Bach’s sinuous lines almost imperceptibly connect melodic peaks with supporting bass notes, creating hints of polyphony. This technique, called compound melody, takes advantage of an effect similar to Gestalt psychology. We parse pitches of alternating high and low register into distinct strands, creating the mental impression of two simultaneous melodies despite the literal disjointedness from one pitch to the next.

The sober Sarabanda presages the harmonic outlines of the Ciaccona to come. And once the spirited Giga has concluded, we have enjoyed roughly twelve minutes of an exceptional – yet formally traditional – suite. This very easily could have been the end. Instead, Bach appends a fifth movement lasting as long as the other four combined. Magisterial, imposing, and brilliantly diverse, the D-minor Ciaccona demonstrates how emotional power can be built up over the course of numerous variations. The underlying skeleton (i.e., chord progression) remains generally fixed, while the fleshing out of the melodic material is limited only by the imagination of the composer and the endurance of the performer. It is a captivating work that has achieved unrivaled fame in the world of solo violin music, a fame that extends into the piano world courtesy of transcriptions by Johannes Brahms (for left hand alone) and Ferruccio Busoni (for two very busy hands!).


INTERMISSION


Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro in E-flat Major, BWV 998

The transcription business has always been a source of income for musicians. The idea of reworking a musical piece for a different instrument or combination of instruments than what the composer originally conceived may strike a modern listener as sacrilegious. But past composers were rarely so puritanical in their beliefs. And indeed, the person making the arrangement was often the composer himself. The reasons are many: to accommodate the available musicians on hand for a particular performance; to provide consumable, domestic keyboard versions of larger ensemble pieces; to appease a patron’s wishes; or simply to re-imagine the work with a wholly different timbre. There is nothing disingenuous about doing this. Most of us may turn away from hearing Debussy’s famous Clair de lune as transcribed for tuba quartet or Beethoven’s Moonlight Piano Sonata on banjo, but within reason, beauty is still in the ear of the beholder.

Consider Bach’s lovely Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro in E-flat. A favorite among modern guitarists, Bach indicated that it could be performed either on lute or keyboard. Indeed, the connection between those two instruments resonates in the frequent inclusion of a “lute” stop on many harpsichords. Bach drew inspiration from his exposure to the French lutenists, whose works provide a link between accompanied song of the Renaissance and the purely instrumental genres of the early Baroque.

The Prelude shares its tonality (E-flat major) with the French Suite heard earlier, as well as the same unhurried, reverential tone. Bach creates a palpable sense of improvisatory “noodling.” The central Fugue is grand but not monolithic. Uniquely cast in ternary shape, it opens with a simple fugue whose subject carries clear links with the Prelude’s main do-ti-do motive. This section ends after only 90 seconds, and Bach seems to dive into a reprise of the arpeggiated Prelude style. However, listen closely as the rapid arpeggios cannot mask the presence of the Fugue subject within its midst. Eventually the actual Fugue returns to round off this massive ABA movement. At the end Bach clears the air with a lively triple meter dance, buoyed along by motoric sixteenth notes all the way to the final cadence.


Sonata in F Minor for Harpsichord and Violin, BWV 1018

Today’s program concludes with another of Bach’s obbligato sonatas for harpsichord and violin. The Largo heading the F Minor Sonata opens with an extended keyboard solo. The violin eventually joins with consummate disguise: a sustained low C, played piano, grows imperceptibly out of nothingness to partake of the dialogue. The scale of the unfolding movement is relatively grand. Eschewing written-out repeat signs, the Largo ebbs and flows across one-third of the Sonata’s entire eighteen minutes, dwarfing each of the other three movements.

The following fugue in three voices quotes from Bach’s own Invention in A Minor, but this is only one theme in a brilliant demonstration of the possibilities Bach’s new texture could afford. The third movement is rather curious, at least for Bach, as it foregoes lyricism for a more unstable, harmonically focused intensity. Against the preceding motion, this Adagio opposes violin double stops (frequently built on dissonant suspension chains) to the harpsichord’s agitated turn figures. It is a picture of three voices having almost nothing in common except that they are playing in the same key!

The Adagio’s final cadence restores a sense of shared purpose, and within moments Bach ushers in the concluding fugue. Its theme is little more than a chromatic rising line, but such modest beginnings serve as monumental springboards to Bach’s creativity. We sense that he could have extended this fugue much further had he chosen; if nothing else, he could have used binary repeats to increase its relative weight. But given the scale of the opening Largo, it seems he has chosen brevity over ponderousness, letting the unequal weights of the four movements each fulfill their proper function.

According to the composer’s son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, these works held their charm into the burgeoning classical era and were, without doubt, among the “finest products” of Sebastian’s maturity. From a historical perspective, it is hard to see how the older Corellian tradition of accompanied violin sonatas would have led to the ensemble sonatas of Mozart, Beethoven, or Brahms without the developments pushed through by Bach. Thus, as happens so often in Bach’s music, we discover here an important historical document that also satisfies in and of itself on an aesthetic level.

© Jason Stell, 2026