My goal

I have decided to learn the Bach Ciaconne for violin. I have wanted to learn this piece for years. In my mind it is the greatest piece ever written for violin, it is a musical novel depicting the whole of humanity, especially its: longing, hope, tenderness, nostalgia, fear, determination, long trials of the soul, epiphanies, loss of hope, ecstacy, joy and sorrow. To name a few, though it seems very trite to talk such about something so expansive and varied as the workings of the human heart. I harbor a strange hope that there is an answer in this piece somewhere. Bach, being a man of untouched and unparalleled genius, must have known something that very few people know, to have written a work of this epic proportion. His music seems revealed, not jostled up of his own imagination. I have a copy of his 6 Sonatas and Partitas for violin solo, and the second half of the book is actually a copy of his original notation. The front page says, in large, scripted and beautiful writing,

Sei Solo a

Violino

Libro Primo

His handwriting is like art and it soothes you. I once heard that if you added up all the time Bach spent notating his vast repatoire, strictly dipping his quill in ink and putting it to page, it would work out to 23 years. That doesn't count any time he spent daydreaming out the window, or trying to work out a particular harmony, or making decisions about the harpsichord arrangement. In his original notation of the Ciaconne, the piece is 4 1/2 pages long. Transcribed into modern, more legible notation, the work is 13 pages.

It has been rearranged a multitude of times for other instruments, but more often than not, the arrangement calls for more than one instrument. It has been re-written for quartet and though not a single note was added, all four players are busy with parts. One can't begin to imagine how Bach visualized this for one, relatively small, four stringed instrument: it can be played by a full orchestra! He attains this multi-texture by employing "double-stops", a technique which requires the violinist to play more than one string at a time. In fact, the Ciaconne starts with a chord of double-stops played on all four strings. At once.

I shall start at the beginning. This week I will spend determining the best outline for my time of practice.