I’ve always thought Herr Bach was a particularly ballsy composer. So much of his catalogue was written for solo instruments; his violin partitas or the cello suites for example. To my simplistic mind, composing for solo instruments puts the composer and the musician out there for all to hear. There’s nowhere to hide if the composition or musicianship is weak.
Bach’s best known instrumental works are probably what we now think of as his solo piano pieces, like the Goldberg Variations. What I didn’t know until today though, is that many were originally written for harpsichord; the Variations is a case in point. It was transposed for the piano after his death.
My personal Bach favourite pops up in the middle of his Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin. Officially titled the Partita in D Minor for solo violin, it’s also known as the Chaconne or Ciaccona. If I had to make a top 10 list of classical music, actually all genres of music for that matter, the Chaconne would be top 3 for sure. I never tire of listening to it.
Written around 1718 give or take a year or two, it forms the fifth movement in a series of five pieces in Partita No. 2, each representing popular dances of the time. Most of the pieces are 3-4 minutes long but then, just as you’re getting used to the format, here comes the Chaconne in all its stunning 13 minute-long glory; a full on symphony played on one instrument.
People have speculated that he wrote it while grieving for his wife who’d recently passed away. Other speculate it’s the bottled up emotion that comes from losing 10 children. Yup, Bach lost 10!
Whatever drove him to write it, it’s fostered a deep reverence amongst classical musicians and composers. It’s almost impossible to play for anyone but true virtuoso violinists. Fiendishly difficult double and triple stopping (with chords thrown in for good measure) add incredible texture to the piece, which is in 3 parts moving from the minor key to the major and then back to minor again.
No less than the great Yehudi Menuhin went as far as to call it “the greatest structure for solo violin that exists.” Brahms said of it:
“On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.
Quite.
I screwed around on the violin as a kid for 5 years at high school. I never really progressed beyond vaguely tuneful scrapes and cat howls. But I was left with enough appreciation for the instrument to know when someone’s doing something truly special with it. The link below is to a great performance by Bulgarian violinist Viktoria Mullova. The real fireworks go off around 5-6 minutes in. So go take a listen. Not just once. Go back and listen a few times and you’ll begin to see what a marvel the Chaconne is. If you only have one piece of classical music to listen to on your phone, let it be this.