Bach and the violin

Johann Sebastian Bach was most celebrated in his day not as a composer – his towering genius in this respect would not be recognised until a hundred years after his death – but as a virtuoso of the organ. Throughout his professional life, however, he also played the violin, an instrument first taught him by his father. In fact he was a respected violinist “in his youth and,” as his son Carl Phillip Emanuel recalled, “well into his old age.” His earliest professional appointment was as a violinist at the court of Duke Johann Ernest of Saxe-Weimar and among the effects left on his death, including no fewer than ten string instruments, was a valuable Steiner violin. He might not have been as accomplished on the violin as he was on keyboard instruments but, at the very least, he knew the instrument well enough to score highly effective violin parts in his concertos, sonatas and numerous other works.

The crucial question, however, is whether he was violinist enought to cope with the awkward polyphonic textures, in the fugal movements in particular, of the six solo sonatas and partitas that he finalised in fair copy in Cöthen in 1720. And, if not, did he know anyone who was? Opinions range from unqualified assertions that, of course, Bach could play them to the theory that they were written for principal violinist at Cöthen, Josephus Spiess, and to the interesting idea that they are purely speculative responses to a supreme technical challenge. Bearing in mind the barely realistic twelve-minute Chaconne of the Partita in D minor, which is featured at the end of this programme, the last notion certainly has its attractions. On the other hand, the dynamic markings intended to create echo effects in these works – few though they are – surely confirm that they were meant to be heard and not just seen.