Long admired for his interpretation of Bach's six 'Sonatas and Partitas' for unaccompanied violin, Jaap Schroder provides a detailed but informal guide to their performance."

J.S. Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin have been central to the violin repertoire since the mid-18th century. This engaging introduction to these works is the first comprehensive exploration of their place within Bach's music, focusing on their structural and stylistic features as they have been perceived since their creation. Combining an analytical study, a historical guide, and an insightful introduction to Bach's style, this book will help violinists, scholars, and other listeners develop a deeper personal involvement with many aspects of these wonderful pieces.

This book examines the nature of musical performance. In it, Dorottya Fabian explores the contributions and limitations of some of these approaches to performance, be they theoretical, cultural, historical, perceptual, or analytical. Through a detailed investigation of recent recordings of J. S. Bach’s Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, she demonstrates that music performance functions as a complex dynamical system. Only by crossing disciplinary boundaries, therefore, can we put the aural experience into words. A Musicology of Performance provides a model for such a method by adopting Deleuzian concepts and various empirical and interdisciplinary procedures. Fabian provides a case study in the repertoire, while presenting new insights into the state of baroque performance practice at the turn of the twenty-first century. Through its wealth of audio examples, tables, and graphs, the book offers both a sensory and a scholarly account of musical performance. These interactive elements map the connections between historically informed and mainstream performance styles, considering them in relation to broader cultural trends, violin schools, and individual artistic trajectories. A Musicology of Performance is a must read for academics and post-graduate students and an essential reference point for the study of music performance, the early music movement, and Bach’s opus.

This pioneering book by an acclaimed expert is the first to discuss all of Bach's unaccompanied pieces in one volume, including an examination of crucial issues of style and composition type and the options open to interpretation and performance. David Ledbetter, a leading expert on Bach, provides the historical background to Bach's instrumental works, as well as detailed commentaries on each work. Ledbetter argues that Bach's unaccompanied works--the six suites for solo cello, six sonatas and partitas for solo violin, seven works for lute, and the suite for solo flute--should be considered together to enable one piece to elucidate another. This illuminating and significant book is essential for professionals, performers, students, or anybody who wishes to learn more about Bach's music.

One of the jewels in the crown of Johann Sebastian Bach's sacred music is its use of astonishingly subtle and complex allegorical and representational devices. But when similar devices appear in the context of one of Bach's untexted, secular, instrumental collections such as the Six Solos (sonatas and partitas) for violin, the question arises whether he might be intending to embed discernible theological significances there as well, thus infusing the secular with the sacred. Such designs would be reasonably plausible within Bach's musical, cultural, and religious context. Shute carefully investigates the extent to which musical features of the Six Solos that seem to invite theological parallels might indeed have been intended to do so. Although the precise extent of Bach's intentions cannot be ascertained with certainty, the degree of correlation among strong potential signifiers would seem to suggest that they, and many other features of the Six Solos, are best explained as the product of extensive theological-allegorical designs on Bach's part, like those evident in his texted vocal music.

This book contains the first three of J.S. Bach's solo violin Sonatas and Partitas arranged for mandolin. The goal of the material is to make learning these challenging pieces easier. Mandolin tablature is included throughout the book. Mandolinists who have little or no experience reading standard notation will find this to be an essential learning tool. For good reason, there has been widespread interest in learning these pieces in the mandolin community. The pieces were originally written for violin. As a result, Bach's use of string crossing patterns and open-string pedals work brilliantly on the mandolin. Also, as solo works they are a useful addition to anyone's performing repertoire. Lastly, even if never performed, learning all or some of these is wonderful for building mandolin technique. Violinists often say that if you can play the Bach Solo Sonatas and Partitas you can play anything-the same is certainly true for mandolinists

J.S. Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin have been central to the violin repertoire since the mid-18th century. This engaging introduction to these works is the first comprehensive exploration of their place within Bach's music, focusing on both the genius and genesis of their structural and stylistic features.

"Facsimile of the autograph manuscript": p. [11-16]

Known around the world for his advocacy of early historical performance and as a skilled violin performer and pedagogue, Stanley Ritchie has developed a technical guide to the interpretation and performance of J. S. Bach's enigmatic sonatas and partitas for solo violin. Unlike typical Baroque compositions, Bach's six solos are uniquely free of accompaniment. To add depth and texture to the pieces, Bach incorporated various techniques to bring out a multitude of voices from four strings and one bow, including arpeggios across strings, multiple stopping, opposing tonal ranges, and deft bowing. Published in 1802, over 80 years after its completion in 1720, Bach's manuscript is without expression marks, leaving the performer to freely interpret the dynamics, fingering, bowings, and articulations. Marshaling a lifetime of experience, Stanley Ritchie provides violinists with deep insights into the interpretation and technicalities at the heart of these challenging pieces.