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Johann Sebastian Bach
Sei solo a Violino senza basso accompagnato

The start of Bach’s production of chamber music coincides with his move to Cothen in 1717, when he became musical director of the Court, employed by Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen (1694-1729). Until then, his work had mostly been focused on compositions for the organ and, above all, his cantatas.
Prince Leopold was a great music enthusiast; in addition to having a wonderful bass voice and playing the violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord fairly well, he also kept a resident chamber orchestra made up of the best musicians in Germany.

These circumstances greatly influenced Bach’s musical production, and it was here that some of his greatest masterpieces came to light, including the Brandenburg Concertos, several chamber sonatas, the Suites for solo ‘cello and the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin or, as they appear on the cover of his autographed manuscript, Six violin solos without Bass accompaniment.
The notions that we have today on the development of violin technique represented in the Sonatas and Partitas was certainly not a concept that was taken into consideration at the time of their composition. Bach’s attention was focused instead on the wealth of polyphonic possibilities when applied to the instrument. Such an operation had already been successfully attempted by the noted violinist Franz Heinrich Ignaz von Biber (1644-1704), above all with his Passacaglia for solo violin; Johann Paul von Westhoff (1656-1705) with the Six Suites for solo violin composed in 1696, in addition to Johann Jakob Walther (1650 - 1717) and Johann Georg Pisendel (1687-1755). A great virtuoso, the latter, who had the good fortune and honour to both meet and work with Vivaldi, who in turn dedicated several sonatas and concertos to him.

The great mastery Bach demonstrated in revealing the polyphonic wealth and full potential of the violin convinced academics, in the past, to include compositions that were not actually his own in Bach’s published works. Fortunately, in the first few years of the twentieth century, credit was finally given to the Italian composer Francesco Antonio Bonporti (1672-1749), student of Corelli in Rome, whose Inventions Op. X for violin and bass, written in 1712, were included in the first edition of the Bach Ausgabe. After a rigorous analysis of the work, it was not hard to observe the eclectic style of the South Tyrolian violinist and the fundamental differences in choice of tonality and even in the choice of titles for the movements; aspects that today would not have gone unnoticed.

Played with great frequency by Bach’s contemporaries, the six Sonatas and Partitas certainly reached a peak from the perspective of both the technical possibilies of the instrument, as well as its polyphonic scope. Today they still represent a necessary destination for all violinists. Testimony of their wide distribution are the sixteen manuscript copies that to date have been uncovered.
If Mendelssohn is to be given merit for having loved and rediscovered Bach’s music, then one of the first violinists to represent the Sonatas and Partitas with an approach that really brought the technical difficulties to light in an extraordinary way (in a period of transformation for the violin, even from a constructive point of view), was Ferdinand David (1810-1873). He was a friend of Mendelssohn and Professor at Leipzig Conservatoire, first violin of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, directed by Mendelssohn and the first of the Hamburg musicians to play the Concerto in E minor Op. 64. It should be noted that the development of violin technique had already benefitted from the contribution of Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1695-1764) who, with his Caprices, influenced Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) to take expressive possibility, that is still renown today, to extreme levels.

David also invited Mendelssohn himself to write an accompaniment for the Sonatas and Partitas (of which only the Ciaccone has been recovered) because, “He felt ridiculous playing on the stage on his own”. Schumann also wrote an accompaniment for the entire work, as he later did for some of Paganini’s Caprices.

It was Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), great friend and collaborator of Brahms, who interpreted a trend ante litteram that we could call philological who, seventy years later, would go on to disrupt the performing traditions of Baroque music. It was down to his merit that the work in question was given its compositional dignity, “For violin solo”.....

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