The Unaccompanied Violin Sonata

In Kothen in 1720, Bach made one violin carry melody, bass and harmony at once

Related

BaroqueSonataViolinCounterpoint

In 1720 Bach wrote six works for unaccompanied violin into one manuscript. For the first time a violin could carry a whole sonata without a bass.

Time and place

Kothen, 1720. Bach was employed at the small court and completed the manuscript of six sonatas and partitas, later numbered BWV 1001 to 1006. No dedication or clear purpose survives. Biber and Westhoff had written for solo violin before, but no complete, copyable set had fixed the genre.

What happened

Without continuo, the player must supply melody, bass and harmony at once. In the fugal movements Bach uses double stops, chords and hidden voices to create the illusion of several parts. In the partitas the chaconne varies a bass line more than thirty times. The player decides bowing, the division of chords and the hierarchy of voices, since the page often asks for more notes than one violin can sound together. The set did not invent unaccompanied writing; it pushed it to a technical limit and shaped it into a complete cycle.

What changed

Solo strings moved from melody instruments needing accompaniment to instruments able to carry large structures alone. Paganini, Ysaye and Bartok later measured their own solo works against this set, and violin teaching treats it as a test of technique and musicianship together. It was published only in the early nineteenth century and rediscovered by the Romantics, then settled into the core of the canon.

Listen for the turn

Begin with the Adagio of the first sonata in G minor, chords like an improvised prelude. Then its fugue, one subject rolling through three or four voices on a single instrument. Finally the Preludio of the Partita in E major, where steady semiquavers use open strings as a bass pedal. The catalogue files these under ensemble; listen to them as solo playing and follow how the voices stack.

Related

This turn belongs to Baroque; the form is at Sonata, the instrument Violin and the polyphony Counterpoint.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "Bach" — the 1720 autograph and genre context checked, not quoted
• Joel Lester, Bach's Works for Solo Violin (Oxford University Press, 1999) — analysis and performance questions checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.