Johann Sebastian Bach, born in 1685 in Eisenach, Germany, has long been recognised as the master of composition, both in terms of his impeccable technique as well as the substance and depth his music offers. It will be difficult to find a musician today who does not appreciate Bach’s contributions to music and his hand in shaping instrumental technique and expressiveness. Bach’s musical language, at once wholly original and wonderfully experimental, combines the styles, techniques and forms of his predecessors with his own innovative point of view, impacting and shaping music and its metamorphic trajectory for generations to come.
Well-known for his virtuosity and command of the keyboard, inclusive of harpsichord and organ, Bach curated a vast output of solo, chamber and concertos for solo instruments and orchestra. In 1717, the composer was appointed as Kapellmeister (or “Director of Music”) in Köthen by Prince Leopold, who was a musician himself. Since the Prince was a Calvinist, he did not require elaborate liturgical tunes for his services, and Bach was afforded the luxury of composing not just liturgical works but also a vast array of instrumental pieces for the court orchestra.
In 1723, he became the cantor of the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany, holding a preeminent position that called on him to be the de facto musical champion of the city. Bach not only curated the musical programmes at St. Thomas Church but also four other churches around the city, including the church at the Leipzig University, with each institution calling on him to consider its particular musical histories and traditions.
Like generations of cantors, composers and musicians before him, Bach freely recycled materials from his extensive canon of compositions as demanded by the needs of positions and patrons. Adapting and transcribing original works into yet another “original” (and sometimes even reconstructing an unfinished one for another set of instruments) endeavours a glimpse into the composer’s creativity and deftness, offering alluring and engaging discourse between scholars and performers about historical performance tradition and the authenticity of newly reconstructed transcriptions.
J. S. Bach: Violin Concerto in A Minor, BWV 1041
The origins of Bach’s Violin Concerto in A Minor remain a bit of a mystery to scholars, since the original autographed manuscript has been lost. Many argue he must have written it around 1714 – a period of time when Bach was studying intently the music of Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi. The concerto – a composition with a solo instrument or instruments accompanied by an orchestra – and its form originated from Italy, and Bach even transcribed many of Vivaldi’s concertos during the early part of his career. Others believe it was during his time in Köthen, around 1720, that he had the time to compose many of his non-liturgical works. Regardless of the lost manuscript, only a set of parts in his handwriting date from his Leipzig years.
Operating in the concerto schema of two fast outer movements framing a slow inner movement, the first movement, Allegro, begins with an assertive theme that the violin soloist never actually plays in whole or alone. This tune returns in the tutti sections as fragments throughout the movement in various forms, highlighting Bach’s nimbleness in manipulating motifs and altering harmonies. The violin solo enters with a yearning plea that develops, reforms and transforms in a seemingly spoken and extemporaneously fashion, and the continuity of this movement is framed by the tutti punctuations of the often-reworked opening motif.
In Andante, Bach utilises the repeated basso voices – cello, bass and typically also harpsichord and lute – to create a warm, rolling plain that recurs throughout the movement that fades during the solo episodes, leaving the violas, or the inner voice, to take on the role of harmonic foundation. The violin solo is wistful, capturing a spoken and singing quality, often taking a turn for the contemplative and melancholic at any given turn.
The Allegro assai offers a robust gigue, or an energetic baroque dance form, and is described as “perhaps Bach’s most animated and carefree movement in the minor mode”. The highly effective bariolage technique – or the fast-paced playing of alternating strings on the violin – implemented in this movement, utilises the open strings on neighbouring strings to immense acoustical and virtuosic effect.
J. S. Bach: Violin Concerto in E Major, BWV 1042
Composed sometime between 1717 and 1723 while serving under Prince Leopold, Bach’s Violin Concerto in E Major is widely considered “a creation of purest Bachian splendour”. Later, the composer even reused the concerto, reworking and adapting it for his Harpsichord Concerto in D Major, BWV 1054.
The opening movement, Allegro, starts with a joyful three-note motif, and the violin solo immediately takes over in a series of insistent and exuberant gestures before restating the original theme. Bach’s creativity presents a series of casual conversations between solo and tutti, framed tightly and masterfully within a strict rhythmic metre. Two sudden shifts to the minor modality provide vigorous and equally-virtuosic contrast to the ebullient opening lines, leading to an improvisatory violin cadenza before the return of the lively and positive spirit of the main theme.
In Adagio, Bach begins the sombre movement with controlled stoicism in a minor key, spearheaded by the lower strings. The violin solo enters with ponderous musings and free-wheeling turns of phrase, sometimes with solo and tutti presenting stunning and questioning gasps of silence. The expressivity of this movement cannot be understated, and Bach’s progressive vision, unmatched grasp of harmony and pacing offer his own brand of Romanticism crafted within the Baroque period.
The finale, Allegro assai, is framed in rondo form, in which a tutti theme is repeated between interjections by a virtuosic solo violin. This buoyant and spirited motif anchors the movement, allowing the soloist to veer off into incredible heights of dazzling motivic ideas, many extracted, reassembled and imbued with dexterity and imagination, all the while rooted in the charm and delight of the opening theme.
J. S. Bach: Violin Concerto in G Minor, BWV 1056R
Like with the D Minor Concerto, scholars recognise Bach’s 15 keyboard concertos, almost without exception, as arrangements or re-crafted pieces based on previously-composed works with few surviving source materials. Part of a set of six solo keyboard concertos, inclusive of the D Minor, Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in F Minor, BWV 1056 was perhaps composed between 1720 and 1741 when he was overseeing concerts at the Collegium Musicum, which boasted an ensemble of professional and university student musicians.
Transcribed for violin in G Minor, this work is also believed to be based on a lost concerto for oboe or violin, and the materials heard in the middle movement actually make an appearance in the introductory movement to his Cantata No. 156, utilising the oboe to feature the hypnotising tune. Scholarship reveals that Bach stayed faithful to the range of original solo instruments for which he was composing and took care not to alter the contour of the solo parts (whether they were for oboe or violin or even voice) when he reworked them for the harpsichord. Thus, a strong argument certainly can be made to reconstruct his F Minor concerto as his G Minor Violin Concerto.
Allegro sparkles right away with rhythmic verve and, like in many of his other concertos, Bach reintroduces the main theme throughout the movement. Unique and almost tongue-in-cheek, the violin solo immediately pops into tiny solos amidst the opening statement. Another clever device Bach implements, is rhythmically setting the solo violin against tutti, with the lone violin almost always in triplets while the orchestra marches on in a straight duple metre. Despite its minor key and surging passages of unrelenting virtuosity, the overall spirit remains somehow charming and even good-natured, concluding with grace, without fuss.
The ensuing Largo opens with the solo violin atop a bed of plucked accompaniment. One of Bach’s finest tunes, the long violin line is at once introspective and poignant, its loneliness highlighted by the sparseness of the tutti writing. As with many of Bach’s slow movements, the subtle and sudden shifts between harmonies can truly catch a listener off guard, and its graceful lyricism seemingly trails off without a proper ending before the immediate onset of the finale.
The following Presto launches right away via a rhythmically-driven main motif. Once again, the solo violin pops out of the texture, answering the orchestra repeatedly with only just two notes before following its own journey of flare and dazzling figurations. At once flashy and probing, the solo violin traverses Bach’s shifting harmonies and nearly brings everyone to a standstill at one point. The violin’s once jovial two-note replies to the orchestra grow bigger and bigger, brasher and more forceful, before leading everyone to the concerto with enthused proclamation.
J. S. Bach: Violin Concerto in D Minor, BWV 1052R
Composed in the first half of the 18th century, Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, BWV 1052, is perhaps one of the most popular works for solo instrument and orchestra composed by the esteemed German genius. In fact, Felix Mendelssohn – celebrated composer and gifted pianist – championed this concerto during countless of his own performances. Johannes Brahms, one of the leading composers of the 19th century, even wrote a cadenza – a solo passage in a concerto meant to show off a soloist’s virtuosity without the accompaniment of the orchestra – for this work.
Curiously, musicologists believe that this concerto is actually based on a long-lost work for violin and orchestra, which has also been performed as an organ concerto. Others even argue that the skeleton and foundation of this work can be found in two of Bach’s cantatas, which are vocal compositions for solo singers with instrumental and choral accompaniments.
As a violin concerto, despite the incredibly challenging technique it demands of a soloist, it does reveal nuanced thematic devices attributed to string playing. In addition to being a master keyboardist, Bach was also a violinist, perhaps intuitively acknowledging the potential of all the ideas he had for the D Minor Concerto as quite suitable for the violin. Though no original manuscript materials remain, this reconstruction from various contemporary sources (and often with adjustments by soloists performing the work), encapsulates the spirit of transcription and adaptation that Bach had embraced.
The opening Allegro immediately presents with a bold, almost demanding theme that reaches for the heights before descending back down to earth. The solo violin immediately launches into dizzying episodes, punctuated by remnants of the opening motif before dashing off breathlessly into yet another series of highly virtuosic showcases. The carefully calculated harmony shifts between minor and major almost offer brief relief to Bach’s intensely passionate writing. The solo part, as one can imagine, adapted from the keyboard version, remains unrelenting on the violinist, leading to a brilliant and sensational violin cadenza followed by the opening theme that ultimately concludes this brutal yet invigorating movement.
The Adagio begins bleakly with tutti strings in unison, returning time and time again and offering the violin solo a bedrock for its ornamented melodic lines. Plaintive and introverted, a shocking contrast to the first movement, the violin intones but fills its languid lines with more and more florid embellishments. Time and time again, the solo violin’s dramatic and anguished exclamations suddenly interrupt the steady foundation laid by the tutti strings before meandering into further musings and lament.
The closing Allegro uses its rhythmic motif, which returns in various forms throughout thanks to Bach’s immense compositional creativity, as a counter to the countless, vibrant gestures offered by the violin solo. Once again, the virtuosity of the keyboard writing should translate into something almost impossible for the violin, yet somehow the music itself prevails, and in this reconstruction, despite its incredible difficulty, emerges as yet another gem for the violin repertoire with tremendous power and consequence. Building to another searingly brilliant cadenza, the main motif finally returns to conclude this consequential transcription.
By Jules Lai