Bach's Works for Solo Violin: Style, Structure, Performance

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Oxford University Press, 1999 - 186 pages
J. S. Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin have been central to the violin repertoire since the mid-eighteenth century. This engaging volume is the first comprehensive exploration of the place of these works within Bach's music: it focuses on their structural and stylistic features as they have been perceived since their creation. Joel Lester, a highly regarded scholar, teacher, violinist, and administrator, combines an analytical study, a full historical guide, and an insightful introduction to Bach's style. Individual movements are related to comparable movements by Bach in other media and are differentiated from superficially similar works from later eras.

Lester employs descriptions of historical and contemporary recordings, as well as accounts of nineteenth-century performances and commentaries on historical editions, to explore these works as they evolved through the centuries. Wherever possible, he uses analytic tools culled from eighteenth-century ideas, key notions originally developed for the specific purpose of describing the repertoire under consideration. Beginning with an overview of the solo violin music's place within Bach's oeuvre, this study takes the Sonata No. 1 in G minor as the paradigm of Bach's compositional strategy, examining each movement in detail before enlarging the discussion to cover parallel and contrasting features of the A-minor and C-minor sonatas. Next, a chapter is devoted to the three partitas and their roots in various dance-music traditions. The book concludes with a summary of form, style, and rhetoric in Bach's music, in which Lester muses on these masterpieces with an overall command of the music, criticism, and history of the 1700s that is quite rare among scholars.

A novel and unprecedented investigation of a particular portion of Bach's accomplishment and a particular aspect of his universal appeal, Bach's Works for Solo Violin will help violinists, students, scholars, and other listeners develop a deeper personal involvement with these wonderful pieces.
 

Contents

ONE The History of Bachs SoloViolin Works
3
Two The Gminor Adagio
25
THREE The Gminor Fuga
56
FOUR The Siciliana of the Gminor Sonata
87
FIVE The Gminor Presto
108
SIX The Partitas
139
SEVEN Closing Thoughts
157
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Page v - As a result, this book is in part a performance guide for violinists, in part an analytic study, in part a rumination on aspects of Bach's style, and in part an investigation of notions of musical form and continuity.

About the author (1999)

Joel Lester is the Dean of the Mannes College of Music. He has been active in many areas of music education, scholarship, and performance for three decades. The author of several books, he is a former editor of Music Theory Spectrum.

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