Sonata No.3 in E major for violin and keyboard BWV 1016 (1717-1722)

Like most of J.S. Bach’s chamber music, his six Sonatas for violin and keyboard were written at Cöthen at some time between 1718 and 1722. As Kapellmeister to a Prince who played violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord – and who required comparatively little church music from him – Bach seems to have found conditions very favourable for work of this kind. Certainly, his second son, Carl Philipp Emmanuel, considered the Violin Sonatas “among the best compositions of my dear departed father,” in spite of their old-fashioned sonata da chiesa construction. His description of them as “trio sonatas” is a broadly accurate reflection of the textural thinking in scores where the violin, the right hand of the keyboard and the left hand each has a distinct role to play. In fact, some of the early sources – the composer’s autograph versions do not survive – suggest the use of a viola da gamba to support the bass line in the left hand. A useful precaution with a harpsichord, it would be superfluous with a modern piano.

While most movements of the Violin Sonatas fit the trio-sonata idea, some do not. The opening Adagio of No.3 in E major, furnished with a bass line so rudimentary    that would make a very dull gamba part, is basically a violin solo. The keyboard right hand is by no means inactive but it is obsessively concerned with one short motif and has nothing to do with the shapely rising theme introduced by the violin in the opening bars and then developed in a wealth of melodic variation and flexibly bowed decorative detail. The following Allegro, on the other hand, is a clearly defined three-part conception, a fugue based on what sounds like the beginning of a`popular tune extended into an eight-bar subject. Although the left hand gets to play that subject only once in the opening section, and although it never touches on the contrasting theme exchanged between the violin and the right hand in the central episode, it does have the function of making the first reference back to the fugue subject in the transition to the closing section.

As an admirer of the slow movements of his father’s Violin Sonatas, Carl Philipp Emmanuel must have been particularly impressed by this Adagio ma non tanto in C sharp minor. Another trio-sonata conception, it is founded on a bass line which, rather like a chaconne theme, retains its regular crotchet rhythm and its distinctive melodic shape throughout. Above it, the keyboard right hand and the violin alternate in providing a chordal accompaniment as the expressive melodic line passes between them and through a variety of harmonic situations. The closing Allegro is a witty inspiration. Beginning apparently as a fugue based on a theme in brisk semiquavers, it includes an extended episode where the violin introduces a new idea in quaver triplets which only after repeated and urgent reminders of the semiquaver theme makes way for a resumption of the fugue and a brilliant coda.

Gerald Larner ©2005