Bach Chaconne - how did/do you practice it?
I am currently having a really fantastic and rewarding time working on the Bach Chaconne. Obviously my teacher and I have been discussing lots of ideas relating to interpretation and technical demands - for information I'm using a baroque bow copy.
However, I know there are probably quite a few violinists on v.com who have worked on and performed this incredible music and I'd love to pick your brains on any particular practising tips, ideas, secret technical wizardry that you've been taught or have found for yourself while studying this piece.
I'm especially interested in ideas relating to the arpeggiated sections - any brilliant suggestions on how to memorise these?
Replies (18)
Photo copying pages definitely helps if you have the Galamian edition... I used a piano when I practiced so I could set out 7 or so pages and didn't have to stop every minute to flip a page.
Listen to a lot of recordings and figure out what you want to do with the piece because there are so many ways to play it. (Obviously add your own flair to it as well)
Lots of slow practice to get every chord perfectly in tune goes without saying... but it's also pretty important to run straight through the piece without stopping periodically to build up the stamina required to play this beast.
I once read that the Chaconne is meant to represent our cycle of life (birth, youth, love, age, death), which is framed by the very stern theme like a red curtain opening at the beginning and finally being drawed at the end. The first part e. g. can be played in the most tender way and flows into a very frisky passage. Maybe just another esoterical musicologist's idea, I don't care, I like the conception, it helps finding a vivid interpretation. What I dislike in many interpretations is a steady character of the piece in it (Morimur is a good example, though I really like it). The Chaconne is full of hidden gems and dancing passages, it's a pity when the secular character as dance is lost, after all a Chaconne had been a pretty sensuous dance.
What might be helpful to learn the Chaconne is listening from a total different point of view, it has been transcripted and slaughtered many times, I also prefer the very Baroque way, but you might get some ideas e. g. for the arpeggios from some of these:
Mikhail Pletnev playing the Busoni transcription: fairly thick and showy, but it has its moments, I love it.
Anatol Ugorski playing the Brahms transcription for left hand: Brahms wasn't proud of this one, but the Chaconne thrilled him: "On 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."
And two symphonical approaches: Joseph Joachim Raff and Stokowski
Should you have a pianist at hand, I can send you the Mendelssohn transcription for violin & piano - great fun!
Wow! Thanks for the fascinating replies Mischa, Andrew and Marc - lots of ideas to consider there. I definitely agree now that writing out the arpegg. chords will make it much easier to memorise.
I've listened to quite a few versions by very different violinists but have to admit that at the moment while I attempt to put my own ideas together I'm trying to avoid that, though I expect I'll soon be turning to my favourite recordings for inspiration again!
Anyone else got brilliant secret tips to share? Buri - perhaps there are particular prunes I need to eat to play this well?!
Very good responses. Henle makes practice scores for the S & P's which are smaller and have more music on one page vs. regular sheet music. This is great for the memorization ptocess and for quick reference. There was a sale going on online but it might be over.
One crazy, but great way to help prepare for a performance on this piece - play it three times in a row. One should only do this towards the end of the preparation process. Make sure you are warmed up and don't play for the rest of the day. One of my old teachers had me to this in a lesson and it paid dividends. Not for the faint of heart.
Good luck!
Let me quote from www.arnoldtsteinhardt.com...if you click button Violin Dreams (I just finished reading this unique book):
"Steinhardt describes Bach's Chaconne as the holy grail for the solo violin, and he illuminates, from the perspective of an ardent owner of a great Storioni violin, the history and mysteries of the renowned Italian violinmakers. Violin Dreams is studded with musical pilgrimages, one of them to the all but vanished Polish shtetl where his mother was born, and where, he shows movingly, his own love for the eerily evocative sound of the violin was born as well.
With Violin Dreams comes a remarkable CD recording of Steinhardt performing Bach's Partita in D Minor as a young violinist forty years ago and playing the same piece especially for this book on his current Storioni violin."
Hansjürgen
Thanks so much for that recommendation Hansjuergen! It so happened that I had an Amazon gift voucher floating around so I've just placed an order for Steinhardt's book/CD. It most definitely sounds like something I'll really enjoy reading and listening to...
Hi Ihnsouk! Thanks for bringing this up! I had a wonderful time learning the Chaconne with my teacher (and baroque bow) and would have to say that not only was it a special experience from the point of view of getting to know this very special piece of music, but also turned out to be incredibly beneficial in developing and improving many areas of my violin technique.
So many aspects of playing come up in this one piece - bowing, articulation, intonation, chordal playing, phrasing, expression etc etc etc!!!
Since then I've been working through the other Sonatas and Partitas... I just know it is a good diet to keep on if you want to be a healthy violinist.
Rosalind:
If I may ask...
How long did this exercise of playing the Chaconne take you? How many hours a day and for how long? Would you mind sharing any other tips or tricks from the school of hard knocks?
Good question VJ. I've been working on the Chaconne for about 7 months now, perhaps 30 minutes a day and still haven't finished the piece; I still have 3 pages left. But, I'm a clumsy old fart, so maybe it's taking me longer than most. I'll bet Al Ku's daughter could have the piece learned and memorized in under a month ... utterly disgusting if you ask me :-).
BTW, the opening 1/2 page is pretty brutal. It took me forever to be satisfied with it (I'm still not really), but I forced myself to press on, and spend a little time on it each day until it gradually got better. If you are working your way through this piece, be prepared, it gets even tougher towards the end. Like any piece, you just have to divide and conquer.
I agree with the previous poster that some of the bowings in the Galamian edition for the long arpeggiated section are kind of goofy -- no need to follow them exactly, if you have a better way of doing it you shouldn't feel bad about changing them.
Otherwise, this is an absolute masterpiece for the violin. It is beyond me how any human being could have conceived of this music. I have listened to quite a few interpretations, and this is my favorite.
The tone he pulls out of the instrument is remarkable.
Before I became a violin maker and injured my left hand, I played the Chaconne quite a bit on violin and viola.
After learning the notes and looking at the original manuscript, I memorized it and some of the others by ear mostly.
Different recordings help to tune in and make your own rendition viable.
I like Gidon Kremer's and Heifetz's recordings, at the time.
Thanks, Smiley, Rosalind, and Ben. At least I have something to go by. Smiley, I'm in the same boat, in terms of age, and it's one of my long-term goals to be able to play the Chaconne. My fear is that my violin-learning highway will now be littered on both sides with the corpse of the Chaconne in addition to other pieces that were begun but never finished.
As for Al Ku's daughter, after watching her play, I find it unbelievable, more so in comparison to my (**extremely**) slow progress. I use my 20+ years of hiatus as an excuse, but that doesn't seem to help ;-) and the violin world doesn't appear to have missed me during that period.
Hi VJ,
You may as well dive in now and do what you can. I was actually going to start on the Beethoven VC and ordered the music, but while waiting for the music to arrive, I started playing around with the Chaconne. After a week, I was hooked. The opening chords are wicked cool. Every once in a blue moon when I get them in tune, it is a complete rush. And the piece just gets better and better (but harder) the more you get into it.
... Back to Al Ku's daughter, to add insult to injury, she could probably give me a stroke a hole and still kick my butt in golf. Al, if you are reading, she is a bona fide genetic mutation :-)
Perhaps listening to performances of the Chaconne by some of the world's best classical guitarists may offer further insights into this piece.
I think the Chaconne is a piece you never finish. You practice the technical needs to play it, and you practice the piece so you know it (maybe by heart), and then as you develop and your musicality develops, you play the chaconne. There is really no right way to play such piece right. You have to play it from what you can and what you know.
I would suggest you to read about Bach, who was he? Which kind of person was he? But also read about a chaconne what it actually is. Do some research on the subject and you will be in a better place to play the Chaconne.
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Here is a link to the facsimile in question:
http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/2/2d/IMSLP29448-PMLP04292-Acro4eT8Ab.pdf
This is Bach's manuscript score of 1720 for BWV 1001-1006 (the 6 solo violin sonatas and partitas). The manuscript has 42 pages and the pdf download is 14MB. It's fairly easy to read (unlike Beethoven's manuscripts!).
Note that Bach writes the arpeggiated sections as chords. This seems to have been common practice in the Baroque - saves on ink and paper, and everyone understood the convention.
A comment in the IMSLP download page :-
Baroque violinist Jaap Schröder writing on the famous Chaconne in Bach's Solo Violin Works (Yale U.P. 2007):
"It is essential to use the readily available facsimile of the Chaconnne [e.g. this particular IMSLP file]. . . . In most other editions Bach's arm has been twisted to make him write things he did not write."
Re- the original manuscript, you can get big posters of it, the first few variations, which are quite good for memorizing purposes since there's less page turning involved. ......
To the original poster, can't tell you much how to practice since I am not a pro, but I do know that listening to it by different musicians inspires me when I get discouraged. It's especially exciting to listen away from home, (I have several recordings of it on my player that I take with me),then when I finally get back home at the end of the day I can't wait to get my hands on my instrument.
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April 19, 2008 at 12:52 AM · -Good for you for borrowing a period style bow, it can be VERY informative, especially in a piece such as this one!
-For the bariolage variations (arpeggiations as you called them): PULL out PEN and manuscript paper--WRITE out the CHORDS themselves by hand-and use your own shorthand for how to roll them, LEARN these variations this way not the daffy page consuming arpeggiations in the Galamian edition--concieve these 2 sections as rolled chord sequences and it is straightforward (set chord, then roll said chord, and then next chord etc etc) both for memorization as well as intonation....think of them as runs of individual of notes (arpeggiations, like you called them) and your ship is sunk from a standpoint of memorization.
HINT: I still have my shorthand for the bariolage passages....it eats up 1 page for the minor bariolage and 3 staves for the major bariolage COMPARE that to the 6 or 8 pages of wasted space in the Galamian edition. Easier to read, easier to understand, easier to memorize, fewer page flips for learning.
-LOTS of listening, get everybodies opinion, then find what you like-you can play the Chaconne in all manner of ways.
-Learn the variations as individual sections, once you can play them fluently; start stringing them together in the larger form (1st minor section, then the major section, final minor section)
-Know and conceptualize the overall form, and forms of each individual variation inside and out.
-READ, there are TONS of papers written on this piece in a scholarly researched manner.
-Understand, hear and feel the underlying chord progression as well as the dance form itself (see the Dance and the music of JS Bach for pointers as to the dance)
Realize that there is such a thing as playing the Chaconne, playing it fluently--and playing it artistically. I took a year to learn it and come to not only play it, but do so artistically--and I still learn more every time I hear and play it.
Congratulations on reaching this step-it is a doooozy :>)
PS-Don't worry too much, it is just a bunch of chords and rolled arpeggios for 15+ minutes :>)