Shadows Over Grandeur: Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor, Chaconne

O  n one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.”
  —  Johannes Brahms, letter to Clara Schumann.

DSM: Christian Tetzlaff’s new CD is phenomenal! And the Partita No. 2—the Chaconne—is gorgeous. Many virtuoso violinists’ gestures aim to arouse the eye as well as the ear. The use of slight detuning of the strings or oddly difficult bow techniques can draw attention to their skill. But Bach’s sonatas and partitas are not conducive to (or tolerant of) such showiness–which tends to support the argument that Bach wrote them for his own use. Tetzlaff’s interpretation of Partita No. 2 is deeply true to the spirit of this composition—this four-bar harmonic progression with sixty-four variations.

CMT: The length of the Chaconne—about 15 minutes—is interesting in itself. Profundity requires time. The artist has to have enough space to capture the audience's attention, plant some seeds, and let them grow. Tetzlaff handles this nicely. Nothing is exaggerated or played merely for ‘effect.’ It is personal and absorbing, poetical yet natural and unadorned. Tetzlaff captures all the tireless circumnavigations around this single idea, making you wonder at Bach’s rhetoric. In Partita No. 2, Tetzlaff evokes the melancholy beneath the Bach’s tribute to his first wife, Maria Barbara. There is pliancy, grandeur, musical freedom. Tetzlaff’s playing displays no desire for ‘show’ but only the desire to engage with the musical core of this piece.

DSM: Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor follows a ‘da chiesa’ “church sonata” pattern, in which the slow and fast movements alternate with each other. And the Chaconne is not a short story or a novella; it is a full-blown novel! A novel has enough space to support introducing and developing a number of characters. This famous Chaconne is positively monumental in its scope and scale.

CMT: The arrival of every four-bar phrase on D is a striking aspect of the Chaconne’s beauty and poignance. It’s an emphatic eternal return, as though it were a physical “law.” The impression is one of inescapability, of inevitability. There’s also the ‘monumentality’ of the sheer variety that emanates from the solo violin as the performer progresses through the 64 variations that comprise the Chaconne. The music and the soloist become an omnipotent force. The piece evokes a transcendent ‘Other’—the Divine, if you wish.

DSM: The sheer diversity of the 64 variations compels us to acknowledge the Other. The diversity is so enormous as to boggle the listener’s mind and cause the jaw to drop. Boggling not in awe at a virtuosic human performer, but in awe at the mysteries of Life, of the Universe.

CMT: All of Bach’s compositions are, in some way or other, variations on a thoroughbass. With the first statement of the four-bar theme, the harmonies first move in halves and quarters. Then they accelerate to quarters at the cadence. Then they speed up to sixteenths.


DSM: Many of the variations occur in pairs—the second, for example, is similar to the first, but intensified. The opening eight bars comprise the theme and its first repetition, where the first three bars of the second statement are identical to the first. Then it broadens in register and introduces thirty-second-note rhythms. In terms of our cognition, Bach's 'haptic update rate' and the hypermeter of the variations’ cycling are what impart this transcendent quality to the Chaconne. Have a look at Choi and Tan paper in this month’s issue of the virtual-reality journal, Presence.

CMT: This presages the predominant dotted rhythm of the next four variations. The dotted-rhythm variations occur in pairs. The first pair is diatonic; the second pair introduces chromaticism—the descending tetrachord goes from tonic to dominant. And now this! And now this! Layer upon layer! World without end!

DSM: The texture perpetually evolves throughtout the Chaconne as well. As the velocity increases, the texture diminishes from the three- and four-voiced chords at the beginning, to single-line writing later in the piece.

CMT: As the texture becomes thinner, the chromaticism increases—the introduction of F-sharp and E-flat in the eighth statement, for example—and the registral ‘span’ increases, from the tenths in the first two statements, to about two octaves in the eighth statement and beyond.

DSM: This process—where some elements diminish while others grow—adds to the sense that the meaning intended or the theme that Bach is referencing is a commentary on life itself, on Nature, on the Cosmos.

CMT: When the next few variations featuring sixteenths evolve into an ever-expanding array of bowing patterns, wider and wider articulations, my impression is one of galaxies, of a universe that is expanding, of a supernova.

DSM: When runs of thirty-seconds first appear they are slurred (mm. 65-72), then they are separately bowed (mm. 73-76). More and more intensity. More and more and more.

CMT: The changes of mode—to the grand D major and back to D minor—are accompanied by returns to the slower rhythms that we had at the opening of the Chaconne. There is a renewal, another aspect of the eternal return.


DSM: But with each rebirth we have the beginnings again of the growing speed and chromaticism and intensity. Inescapable. Inevitable. Changes of changes. Wheels within wheels.

CMT: There’s a tension—for the performer especially, but also for the listener—between the elements of articulation, tempo, affect, bowing, fingering, and other aspects of technque. The variations call upon these in different ways—increasing the importance of one or another of them and diminishing the importance of the others. This is part of the ‘novel-esque’ character of the piece. Obviously, it's also part of why the Chaconne is such a showcase for virtuosic playing.

DSM: But it would be a mistake to dwell on technique. A technically brilliant performance of the Chaconne may be emotionally empty. Instead, the tension between these demands is the source of a cast of ‘characters’ in the composition.

CMT: These are different voices, I think—not the soliloquy of a single voice. The textures of the four strings, how Bach uses the violin's four strings, are, to me, at least four different voices in this Partita.

DSM: The developments in the Chaconne are logical and yet suprising. Its inordinate novelty—novelty begetting yet more novelty—is the source of much of the piece's profundity.

CMT: There’s an inherent urgency to the Chaconne as well. Something like the remark J. Tillman made upon hearing Josh Bell play the Chaconne in the Washington D.C. subway station last January – ‘the kind of music the ship’s band was playing on the Titanic, before the iceberg.’

DSM: In other words, the Chaconne “knows” that it must end. It is anticipating the end of the universe. In the beginning there was the Big Bang. The Chaconne is showing us the approach of the Big Crunch.

CMT: Yes, this Chaconne is not sticking to the script of Church dogma in the way that Bach’s sacred music does. This Chaconne is agnostic, or even atheist in its view. We feel the finiteness of our existence on Earth and are not exhorted to believe in any life hereafter.

T o prepare for a friend’s funeral service, I had been practicing the Chaconne every day—fussing over individual phrases, searching for better ways to string them together, and wondering about the very nature of the piece—at its core an old dance form that had been around for centuries. After the many times I had heard and played the Chaconne, I had hoped it would fall relatively easily into place by now, but it appeared to be taunting me. The more I worked, the more I saw; the more I saw, the further away it drifted from my grasp. Perhaps that is in the nature of every masterpiece. But more than that, the Chaconne seemed to exude shadows over its grandeur and artful design. Exactly what was hidden there I could not say, but I would lose myself for long stretches of time exploring the work’s repeating four-bar phrases, which rose and fell and marched solemnly forward in ever-changing patterns.”
  —  Arnold Steinhardt, Violin Dreams.

F rom the grave majesty of the beginning to the thirty-second notes which rush up and down like the very demons; from the tremulous arpeggios that hang almost motionless, like veiling clouds above a dark ravine ... to the devotional beauty of the D-major section, where the evening sun sets in a peaceful valley: the spirit of the master urges the instrument to incredible utterances. At the end of the D-major section it sounds like an organ, and sometimes a whole band of violins seems to be playing. This Chaconne is a triumph of spirit over matter such as even Bach never repeated in a more brilliant manner.”
  —  Phillip Spitta.

• Christian Tetzlaff, represented by Harrison Parrott Assoc.
  
• Big Crunch wikipedia page
  
• Josh Bell in D.C. Metro, L'Enfant station, JAN-2007. Washington Post article
  
• Video of Josh Bell in D.C. Metro, L'Enfant station, JAN-2007.
  
• Beach D. Aspects of Unity in J. S. Bach's Partitas and Suites: An Analytical Study. Univ Rochester, 2005.
  
• Choi S, Tan H. Perceived instability of virtual haptic texture: III. Effect of update rate. Presence 2007; 16:263-78.
  
• Efrati R. Bach: Interpretation of the Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin. Schott, 1993.
  
• Mastroianni J. Chaconne. Damian, 2005.
  
• Schröder J. Bach's Solo Violin Works: A Performer's Guide. Yale Univ, 2007.
  
• Schwenger P. The Tears of Things: Melancholy and Physical Objects. Univ Minnesota, 2006.
  
• Tetzlaff C. Sonatas and Partitas for Violin. (Hanssler, 2007.)