Notes

Absolutely, and it is a true shame that this is not taken into account in performances. While I understand the urge to keep performances true to the ‘baroque’ style with much of Bach’s violin music, the content and meaning of the chaconne - the incredible emotion - and the sheerly incredible efficacy with which Bach expresses this through notes - is absolutely unmatched in any other composition alone that I’m aware of. Baroque as Bach may be, the Chaconne absolutely begs to be romanticized. I dream of the day I might hear a truly skilled violinist do it justice - as no recordings come close, partially due to the intrinsic difficulty of matching such a incredible, genius-borne construct.
Here’s the story, please do what you can to make violinists aware, as playing the Chaconne without the backstory is like trying to appreciate the Mona Lisa by touching it with your eyes closed.
Bach had just finished writing his 2nd partita for solo violin, comprised of 4 parts: allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue. Absolutely beautiful as they are, they have a remarkably somber, dark tone rarely found in any of Bach’s other compositions. Following this, he walked a few hundred miles to take a position for some nobility for a few months. Bach then walked back home to find his first wife not only dead, but buried for a week. He then sat down and wrote the Chaconne - the oddball, fifth part, tacked on to the previously complete partita. It is epic - longer than the four preceding movements combined - and fits perfectly. It truly does, as has been said, exquisitely express and describe - in the most moving manner - the entire range of the most intense human emotion. I’ve never heard a piece richer in meaning, it’d be a breeze to put a sentence, if not a short paragraph, to every bar.
Briefly, this is what the Chaconne describes, clear as day, to me.
It begins with pain. Death of a love. Mourning, crying, trying to find a way around the most painful truth, but despite trying, finding no way around it, and painfully returning to the inevitable realization.
At bar 25, the sheer mourning pain of the previous section yields to a slightly more elaborative effort to describe what happened. The theme of attempting to dodge the unavoidable is present again, but with sheer pain having yielded to slight, growing expressions of frustration. Frustration is briefly forgotten in a slightly more soprano telling of sadness, before, at bar 57, the sheer weight and inevitability of tragedy hits harder than ever.
At bar 65, the grief gets out of control. Lacking the pure pain or more calculated descriptions the previous sections offered, hints of madness begin to appear. The same pain and attempts to avoid it are again present, but exhaustion, desperation, and weakness appear and get stronger.
At bar 77, the exhaustion of grief overwhelms, and a half-conscious, not-quite pitying, slightly spooky resignation appears. The grief has necessitated rest, a sleepiness.
This leads to the arpeggio, a dream-like part of the piece that shows, awake and grieving, or exhausted and sleeping, the pain is still present. While it starts slowly, it grows, with the strongest feelings of madness/insanity found in the piece, to a dramatic, severe climax.
At bar 126, consciousness appears again, with the plain truth right there. Avoidance is not attempted here - it has tried and failed. Difficult acknowledgement morphs to the feeling - for the first time in the piece - of acceptance, culminating where the melody in bar 132 ends with the open D/A3 double stop.
What magic the end of denial brings to us, as bar 133 begins and ever-so-gently ushers in support from the divine. Almost imperceptibly, the gentlest support and love spreads. In symmetric opposition to the attempts to prior attempts to avoid the truth, every turn here finds glowing peace, which build together, stronger and stronger, showing that for every ailment, there is a panacea. This soft aid becomes more explicit, more explanatory in proclaiming it’s unshakeable positivity and love. Bar 177 seems to be Bach expressing again, but with the aid of the positivity from the previous section. With acknowlegment of the positive, the positive joins him, and culminates in, forgive the stereotype, but literally a glorious chorus of angels absolutely singing out and drowning out any negativity.
Bar 201 seems to usher in the actual dealing with emotions, churning through; difficult, but with some acceptance from the support of the previous section. This part, in a way, seems to be the least painful part of the piece, the closest to healing that the voice of Bach comes.
For, at bar 209, the pain reappears, but now in a more haunting, slightly more drained, philosophical tone. The acceptance of the loss, the quietness that is inevitable when one person is left after two were there. Attempts are made at denial, but lack the vigor they had prior. He is alone.
At bar 229, denial ends, and the truth is yet again confronted. This is followed by some final, more mad expressions of pain, and then the piece ends up where it started. Acknowledging the unavoidable fact that his love is dead.