Completed by 1720; 12 minutes

The most reliable surviving source of the Six Sonatas and Partitas is an autograph copy that came down to us from the inheritance of Christiane Louisa Bach, one of Bach’s granddaughters. Its full title is Six solos for violin, without accompaniment, Book One, by Joh. Seb. Bach, 1720. Book Two would be the six Cello Suites and it has been suggested that a collection for flute may also have been in Bach’s mind. In 1720, when he completed and compiled the collection, Bach was midway through his appointment as Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, but drafts may have been made even earlier when he was employed as a violinist, amongst other duties, in Weimar. With their completion, Bach’s six Sonatas and Partitas represent the culmination of Baroque polyphonic writing for a solo string instrument. 

The Partitas (or Partia, as they are called in Bach’s manuscript) are essentially Suites, a meaning that German composers had relatively recently adopted for their collections of instrumental dance music, with or without additional movements of a non-dance nature. The Third Partita opens with one of the finest of Bach’s preludes – a joyous, virtuoso movement in which Bach, a master of the art of illusion, creates a rich polyphonic texture with many voices from his solo melody instrument. Dance movements follow, beginning with the Loure, a stately court dance, and a calming movement to balance the brilliance of the opening Preludio. Then comes a Gavotte en rondeau, in which the elegant dance section has brief episodes interspersed between what has become one of Bach’s favorite dance melodies.