Martha Yasuda Releases Violin Duets for Solo Bach

September 11, 2024, 4:44 PM · Solo Bach - what wonderful music for a violinist to play, all alone. "Sei Soli..."

But what if you didn't have to be alone, playing solo Bach? And what if, as a teacher, you could play along with your students who are learning solo Bach?

Now you can, thanks to Atlanta-based violinist, teacher and arranger Martha Yasuda, who has created a set of duets for selected movements from Bach's solo violin works called Out of the 'Bachs' - Unaccompanied Sonatas & Partitas for Two Violins.

Why would anyone take on such a daunting task? For Martha, it was the next logical step after arranging violin duet parts for a mind-boggling chunk of the violin repertoire: every piece in all the Suzuki Books, the Mendelssohn Concerto, all the Mozart Concertos, the Six Handel Sonatas, pieces such as Meditation from Thais, plus entire books of Christmas melodies, religious hymns, American songs, wedding music and a raft of cello-violin duets and transcriptions for viola. (Check it all out here.)

As a teacher, I have been using Martha's duets on a near-daily basis for years, to accompany students as they learn the repertoire. I find that playing her duet accompaniment provides a kind of communication with students that words can not, as I model articulations, bowings and dynamics as we play together.

But writing duet parts for unaccompanied Bach - is it even allowed? This music is so revered by violinists, it's an intimidating prospect. At a certain point Martha did try it, but then she shelved the project.

Then recently a teaching colleague named Hector Zavala pushed the question. He wrote to her and asked, had she written a duet part for Bach's "Preludio" from the Partita No. 3?

"I looked on my hard drive and discovered that I had tried to write a duet part for the Preludio back in 2021 and, after writing 40 measures, I ultimately gave up and forgot about it," Martha told me. "I was ready to communicate this to Hector and then I decided, wait a minute, it’s three years later. Maybe it will feel easier now!"

She was right - it was easier. "It flowed quite easily the second time around. Then, of course, I wondered if I could do other movements," she said. "There was a certain amount of trepidation when I first started because of my utmost respect for J. S. Bach. Who am I to make changes like this in his amazing music? Nevertheless, I started hearing things, and when I start hearing things, I have learned to listen and explore. The fact that this idea hasn’t been explored a whole lot definitely made it feel 'Out of the Box' or -'Out of the Bachs'!”

"Obviously, my harmonic ideas are personal, and someone else might hear the chords differently," Martha said. However, since these are Baroque works, that limits the possibilities - there are not quite as many chord possibilities as with pieces from the Classical and Romantic eras.

The book includes duet parts for Bach's Partita in D Minor: Allemande, Courente, Sarabande, Gigue; Partita in E Major: Preludio, Loure, Gavotte e Rondeau, Bourree, Menuets 1 & 2, Gigue; Sonata in G Minor: Adagio, Sicilienne, Presto; and Partita in B Minor: Double No. 1, Courante, Double No. 2, Double No. 3, Double No. 4.

How did Martha decide which movements to include in this first book?

"I must give credit to my Atlanta Symphony friend, Carolyn Toll Hancock," Martha said. Carolyn is a teacher who guides many of her students through their first experience of playing solo Bach. "She helped me to 'pull in the reigns' and focus on the students that would benefit the most from duets," Martha said. "My vision became clearer: include the movements that are most popular, to help out students who are new to Bach."

BELOW: Martha plays her duet arrangement of the "Giga" from Bach's Partita in D minor with violinist Carolyn Toll Hancock.

"At that point, I started tossing out the Fugues and the harder movements that are rarely performed by most people," she said. "I was especially daunted by the C Major Fugue, which is more than 350 measures!" But she isn't ruling out publishing duets for those more difficult movements in the future.

"I have actually written duets for almost all of the solo Bach," Martha said. "I am leaving room for the possibility of adding some of these harder movements into a more advanced publication later, but I first of all wanted to focus on players that perhaps struggle to make solo Bach sound beautiful and convincing. I am extremely hopeful that playing duets can make a huge difference concerning musicality and harmonic understanding for them.

Still, those "Bach beginner" movements posted plenty of challenges.

To test out her emerging arrangements, Martha tried playing them along with recordings of famous artists on Youtube, "but most of them play the faster movements super-fast, so my duet parts could barely keep up!" With that in mind, she landed on playing them alongside recordings by the 20th century violinist Henryk Szeryng, "because he played with very reasonable tempi," Martha said. "I remember listening to his recordings many years ago, when I first studied solo Bach myself. I learned so much from him, and I let his musicality be my teacher."

After putting her duet parts to the Szeryng test, "I tossed out many of my extra notes and moved a lot of passages into lower ranges, imitating the bass line. I especially learned to appreciate the value of the 'rest,' so the solo parts could be given priority."

When Martha's husband, James Garvin, suggested calling the book "Out of the Bachs," she immediately agreed. "It truly does feel 'Out of the Box' to mess with Solo Bach like I have done. It takes some audacity to add a second part to something written for one solo player by one of the greatest composers of all time!" she said. At the same time, "after having written a gazillion duets since 2002, I really see the powerful effect duets can have."

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Click here for Martha Yasuda's Out of the 'Bachs' - Unaccompanied Sonatas & Partitas for Two Violins.

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Replies

Mary Ellen Goree

September 12, 2024 at 02:27 AM · What a great idea!

Paul Deck

September 13, 2024 at 12:21 AM · I agree with Mary Ellen! Some of the best memories of violin lessons as a child were playing duets with my teacher. We played all of the Pleyel and most of the Mazas, too. One book I remember was Dont Op. 20 which has a "main" study and a kind of accompaniment part. Are these Yasuda Bach duos in that general vein?

Mark Kashper

September 13, 2024 at 09:07 AM · This reminds me of my time as a student of David Oistrakh. When i or another student played unaccompanied Bach during our lessons (his Room 8 in Moscow Conservatoire was usually full of students - his and others too), the great King David was always seated with his violin in his hands and often improvised a bass line creating a beautiful organ-like sonority that enhanced the effect of those divine pieces. Unforgettable!

Wesley Parish

September 13, 2024 at 10:16 AM · FWIW, on IMSLP I've come across selections from the Sonatas and Partitas, that have been edited into violin duets. It's by Willem Kes.

Christian Lesniak

September 13, 2024 at 11:56 PM · Very cool, Mark! I will be a very attentive audience for any Oistrakh stories you ever share on this site.

John Rokos

September 16, 2024 at 12:08 AM · My transcription of Dowland's Melancholy Galliard for solo viola is, I think, still available for download. I never bothered to publish the arrangement for violin and viola duet that I and a pupil solely of my father's busked with in the grounds of Pevensey Castle before a charity performance of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream in that venue (We also played arrangements of Salinger's Round and th Agincourt Song).

It turned ou that the people we were busking to was the queue for the Ladies Portable.

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