Bach’s solo and double violin concertos

by Andrew Manze

In his youth, and well into old age, he played the violin with a clear, penetrating tone.

This is an eyewitness account of Johann Sebastian Bach. It was written by Bach’s son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, who goes on to say that Bach felt he could direct an orchestra better from the violin than from the keyboard. In this same way, in October 1996, The Academy of Ancient Music performed and recorded Bach’s great violin concertos, with the soloist standing in the middle of the orchestra and directing the performances by the very act of playing the music.

J. S. Bach

In the 1730s, Bach was in charge of the Leipzig collegium musicum, an informal society of music lovers which met weekly for concerts in the open air during fine weather (Wednesday, four o’clock) or else actually inside one of Leipzig’s coffeehouses (Fridays at eight). As well as local musicians and visiting virtuosos, the performers often included some of Bach’s sons and students, who not only played but helped copy out instrumental parts as well. Without their contribution, many works, including two of the present concertos, might have been lost.

Although Bach’s concertos were probably often on the collegium programme, it is generally agreed that the majority of them was originally composed while he worked at Weimar and Cothen (1708–1723). During these years several important collections of Italian concertos were published, in particular by Albinoni and Vivaldi, which Bach knew intimately. In fact, such was his admiration of Albinoni’s compositions that he arranged many of them for solo harpsichord, no doubt so that he could perform them himself without the encumbrance of an orchestra! Bach’s own concertos owe a lot to Vivaldi’s, although they could be said to be more adventurous in their structure and decoration. To use an architectural analogy, Vivaldi presents musical facades with clean edges and sharp corners, whereas Bach’s style is heavier, festooned with mesmerising patterns and beautiful curlicues.

Only two of the four concertos we recorded, the A minor and the famous 'Double’, actually survive in copies made during Bach’s lifetime. Handwriting experts have identified several different copyists at work, including Bach himself, his son C. P. E, and his son-in-law, J. C. Altnikol. One can just imagine them sitting around a candlelit table of an evening hurriedly scribbling to have everything ready for the following day’s rehearsal.

A nineteenth-century artists impression of J. S. Bach and family.

So what of the other two concertos of which original copies do not survive? For the E major concerto the modern performer is faced with two possible solutions. The easier option, which most performances and editions choose, is to read from later copies made after Bach’s death. These carry with them the risk, however, that they contain mistakes or have in some way been ‘improved’. Modernisations crept into music remarkably fast in the eighteenth century, a very fashion conscious age, and are dangerously uncheckable today. The other solution is to look at the version of the work, in Bach’s own handwriting, in which the solo violin part was arranged for solo harpsichord (BWV 1054, transposed down a tone to D major). With care Bach’s original version can be reconstructed to reach a reading which is more faithful to the composer’s original intentions. This is the solution we opted for, perhaps for the first time, on this recording.

This new reading is as nothing, however, compared to the fresh approach to the ‘other’ double concerto presented here, BWV 1060. The only eighteenth century sources are of a concerto in C minor for two harpsichords, but by comparing the piece with Bach’s other concertos, it has long been assumed that BWV 1060 is an arrangement of an original which is lost. We should not be surprised at a composer as great as Bach reusing and rearranging material but instead should remember that this was an age when printing was expensive and there were no photocopiers. Rather we should marvel that he composed as much as he did, since his actual job description was Kapellmeister, director of music, responsible for four busy Leipzig churches (as well as voluntarily running the collegium musicum): composition was just one of his many duties.

So, if BWV 1060 only survives in an arrangement, what was its original scoring? In Bach’s time the vast majority of double concertos had two solo violins as their solo instruments. This fact, plus Bach’s habit of transposing violin music down a tone when arranging it for harpsichord (as we saw in BWV 1042 above), strongly suggest that an original version was most likely for two solo violins and in the key of D minor. Back in the 1920s musicologists began suggesting the alternative combination of violin and oboe, which found favour with audiences (and oboists!), but sadly recent advances in the playing of period instruments have all but proved that the piece cannot have been for the baroque oboe as Bach knew it.

So on this recording we ‘restored’ to the piece two solo violins and the key of D minor, for the first time as far as we are aware. Perhaps in this modest way we can claim that ours is a world premiere recording!