You can now read this post in Spanish on Deviolines
I have been spending much of my free time during the pandemic learning how to play the Bach Chaconne on guitar, drawing heavily on Rodolfo Betancourt’s transcription. Here’s Christopher Parkening doing my favorite interpretation by a guitarist (I do not sound remotely like this):
This journey has been one long reward for the obsessive-compulsive side of my personality. As of this writing, I can stumble through the whole piece, and can get through the first half in a way that sounds almost musical. If you want to try too, here’s a violin score. Also, here are measures 81 through 117 of the Chaconne from Bach’s manuscript:
This video scrolls through his entire manuscript synced to a recording!
Beyond the sheer aesthetic joy of it, I have a couple of different motivations for struggling through the Chaconne. I plan to use it for teaching, for example in Fundamentals of Western Music at the New School. Also, it’s a perfect test case for the power of Ableton Live as a tool for learning canonical classical works generally. Due to my particular combination of strengths (great ear) and weaknesses (can’t read notation to save my life), I have needed to intensively analyze and memorize the piece before I could play it. But now I have it analyzed and memorized! I did a study of the chord progressions and of the rhythmic groove. In this post, I’m doing something bigger: a look at every single measure of the piece, all 256 of them.
First, some background. Why does all this solo violin music even exist? Unfortunately, Bach didn’t document his own motivations for composing it, so we’ll probably never know. But there’s a good chance he meant the violin partitas and sonatas to be pedagogical, a kind of method book for contrapuntal playing. They weren’t performed in a concert setting until 1802, more than fifty years after Bach’s death, but as with The Art of Fugue, he may not have been expecting anyone would perform them.
The Chaconne is a Monumental Classic Of The Western Canon, but it has a surprisingly simple structure: a series of four-bar loops, each of which follows a broadly similar harmonic outline. This ultra-predictable form is more like what you’d expect in a rock or pop song than a classical work.
The generations of composers who came after Bach used structures like sonata form to sustain interest over long time spans. When the canonical white guys wanted to write a symphony or some other large-scale work, they used multiple themes moving through multiple key centers, so there could be lots of long and contrasting processes of statement, development, and transformation, as Joel Lester puts it. But the symphonic forms didn’t exist in Bach’s time. When he wrote a “sinfonia,” that meant something less than five minutes long. His large-scale works are collections of short individual movements. For example, the Goldberg Variations are collectively more than an hour long, but each individual variation is only a few minutes.
The Chaconne is itself a part of a larger collection of short pieces, the Partita No. 2 for Violin in D minor. The partitas are collections of dance music in a particular key. You don’t necessarily think of “Bach” and “dance” in the same sentence, and maybe he didn’t intend anyone to dance a literal chaconne to his Chaconne. But it’s a dance structure nevertheless. The Chaconne is unusually long by Bach’s standards, almost as long as the rest of the movements in the D minor Partita put together. But its large-scale structure is simple: a string of 64 phrases, each of which is a uniform four bars long. Each phrase starts on the tonic chord (D minor or D major), and each one ends on a dominant chord (A7), which resolves back to D at the beginning of the next phrase. That is remarkably flat and “uninteresting” harmony.
Joel Lester says that “the concentrated focus of the Chaconne grows in part from its unvarying tonality.” Maybe that’s why I like it so much–I enjoy it when musicians take simple, static harmonic ideas and push them to extreme lengths. In this sense, the Bach Chaconne is like the endless one-chord grooves that John Coltrane played in the early 1960s, or the ones Miles Davis played in the late 60s through the mid-70s, or the ones Fela Kuti played his whole life. This connection to groove-based music is more apparent if you listen to my remix of the Chaconne over Afro-funk beats.
The first two four-bar phrases in the Chaconne state a theme, and the rest are increasingly abstract variations on that theme. The theme is like the head in a jazz tune, the first thing you hear in the piece, and the last. Bach also repeats alternative versions of the theme halfway through the Chaconne and at the end. For the sake of simplicity, I describe all sixty-four of the phrases as “variations.” Many of the variations come in matched pairs, like bookends. Some are connected together in larger groups. Bach liked to run melodic ideas across the phrase boundaries, so the “sections” that you hear intuitively don’t always line up with the phrase structure.
As you step through the variations one at a time, it’s fascinating to see how carefully Bach builds up the complexity and intensity. It’s not a linear build over the whole piece. When the rhythms get more complicated, the harmonies get simpler, and vice versa. At variation 34, the key center shifts from D minor to D major, and Bach resets the complexity level back to almost zero. The complexity then builds up again until variation 53, the shift back to D minor, at which point it relaxes a bit. Then the complexity peaks in the last few variations.
How effective is Bach’s pacing over 256 bars? You can judge for yourself. I find the piece to be moving and effective for its entire duration, and my attention span is usually too short for classical music. Even my kids enjoy listening to the Chaconne, and they’re starting to sing along with the catchiest parts. Like everything Bach wrote, the Chaconne is packed with memorable hooks. It’s greater than the sum of its parts, but the parts are pretty delightful too.
So. Here are the variations. Each one is timestamped to a location in this video:
You can also download the MIDI file of the piece here.
Variation 1 (theme)
The Chaconne starts on beat two, strangely. (The missing downbeat gets filled in at the very end of the piece.) The first two measures follow the chaconne rhythm exactly. The top notes of the chords spell out the melody, which flows uninterrupted straight into the next variation.
Variation 2 (theme)
Bach is still following the chaconne rhythm closely. This theme uses a different ending from the first statement, with the melody rising to a higher and more intense peak.
Variation 3
The melody shifts to a lower register, so now it’s the lowest or second-lowest note in each chord. This melody feels archetypal, like the most generic chaconne melody that Bach could come up with. The chords stay the same, but the rhythm settles into a more regular pattern: dotted eighth, sixteenth, dotted eighth, sixteenth. This variation forms a call-and-response structure with variation 4.
Variation 4
This is pretty much the same melody as in variation 3, but it moves through some slightly more complex harmony at the end.
Variation 5
The melody from the previous two variations gets repeated, but slightly differently and an octave higher. There’s more homophony in the two-voice counterpoint as well. Up until this point, every note in the Chaconne has been from the D natural minor or D harmonic minor scales. However, right before the third bar in this variation, there’s the first appearance of the note F-sharp, the major third in the key of D. It’s part of a D7 chord, the V7/IV. The next chord includes the first appearance of B natural, which implies D melodic minor. This variation forms a call-and-response structure with variation 6.
Variation 6
This is mostly the same as variation 5 until the last measure, when there’s another new chromatic pitch, G-sharp. It’s part of E7, the V7/V chord. Being the clever composer that he is, Bach doesn’t resolve that right away, he puts in a Dm/A chord first, a kind of contrapuntal extension of A7sus4.
Variation 7
There’s a new, simpler rhythm, straight eighth and sixteenth notes. The top voice plays scalar patterns, and the bottom voice does minimal counterpoint on a simple i-iv-V pattern. On the second beat of the second measure, Bach implies an A7(b9) chord by leaping from the third C-sharp up to the flat ninth B-flat. That is not how he would describe what’s happening here! But that’s how it sounds to my jazz-trained ears. This particular leap happens many more times in the piece.
Variation 8
A more melodically elaborate path through variation 7’s chord changes. At the end of the third bar, there’s another new pitch we haven’t heard before, E-flat, the suspended fourth of the Bb chord. Bach has now used all twelve chromatic pitch classes, and we’re only an eighth of the way through the Chaconne. In the second and third beats of the second bar, there’s a motif on A7 that arpeggiates a C#dim7, steps down to G, and then leaps up a whole major sixth to E and back down. It appears again at the very end of the Chaconne, and it’s quite a striking little melody. I call it the Tragic Baroque Ending riff.
Variation 9
A nice jazzy sequence of dominants going around the circle of fifths. Check out the elegant pattern of chromatic descents doing a call and response in the high and low registers. The first chromatic descent from B-flat to G-sharp is particularly dramatic. Bach uses a simple straight eighth note rhythm in here so as not to overload your brain.
Variation 10
A more complex arpeggiated version of variation 9, with sixteenth notes instead of eighth notes. At the end of measure 3, there’s the C-sharp to B-flat leap implying A7(b9) again.
Variation 11
Harmonically similar to variation 10, but a bit simpler, with a mix of scale runs and arpeggios. The run up the entire D melodic minor scale in the first bar is another recurring motif that Bach will use many more times throughout the Chaconne.
Variation 12
Resolution of the A7 to Dm is delayed until the second beat of the first bar. Sixteenth-note scale runs with some big leaps in the V7 and V7/iv chords. In the third bar Bach runs all the way up the G melodic minor scale, a parallel to the D melodic minor run in variation 11.
Variation 13
Bach introduces a new chord progression, the Andalusian cadence, familiar to Ray Charles fans as the changes to “Hit The Road, Jack.” This progression will continue through the next eight variations, in increasingly abstracted form. Here, it has a few embellishments: the Gm before the C7, the F7 tonicizing the Bb, and the Eø7 as the predominant to A7. Rhythm-wise, there are sixteenth-note scale runs with some wide leaps at each chord change, giving way to arpeggios at the end.
Variation 14
Continuing with the Andalusian cadence. Sixteenth-note arpeggios and scale fragments in a tidy rising sequence.
Variation 15
Andalusian cadence. Eighth-note double stops and arpeggios giving way to sixteenth-note sequences.
Variation 16
Andalusian cadence. Arpeggiated sixteenth notes with chromatic lower neighbors in the arpeggios, very jazzy. Check out how huge the intervals are in the Em arpeggio at the end of the third measure.
Variation 17
Andalusian cadence. Sixteenth-note arpeggios giving way to 32nd-note scale runs. This looks very difficult to play, but if you know your scales, it isn’t: Bach is running down D natural minor and Bb major, and running up and down D melodic minor at the end.
Variation 18
Andalusian cadence. Mostly 32nd-note scale runs. Once again, it looks scarier than it is. The first three bars are entirely within D natural minor. The last bar is where it gets a bit more complicated. The first note is a C-sharp implying D harmonic minor, but then the next beat and a half are a run straight down D natural minor. The last beat and a half go down and then back up D melodic minor.
Variation 19
Andalusian cadence. This variation is one of the hardest to play, because it’s almost all 32nd note scale runs, and because the scales shift so much: two beats of D melodic minor, then a chromaticized Bb arpeggio, then almost two bars of G melodic minor, then a very quick switch back to some version of D minor for the last half a beat. It’s like running fast through an obstacle course!
Variation 20
The pulse settles back down to steady sixteenth notes, but the harmony gets way more complicated. It’s like an Andalusian cadence, but C and Bb are replaced by their relative minors and are preceded by secondary dominants. There’s a cool ascending and descending arpeggio pattern. There’s a lovely chromatic descent to the G-sharp in E7.
Variation 21
Some new rhythms and some new chords. I call them the Mystery Chords. I guess we’re supposed to hear them as contrapuntal extensions of the chords in variation 20, but I can’t help hearing jazzy chromatic substitutions. The arpeggios have doubled notes in a hip syncopated pattern, with a 32nd note sequence at the end. This is hard on the brain, but very satisfying to play once you get it down.
Variation 22
The harmony gets dramatically simpler, while the melody gets more complex, with fragmented rising and falling phrases in an unpredictable pattern. It’s two beats of D melodic minor, a beat of D natural minor, two beats of A melodic minor, a beat of A harmonic minor, and then a bar of D natural minor again. The three-note hemiola patterns in the third and fourth bars sound more like jazz than Baroque music. That top G5 is the highest note in the whole piece.
Variation 23
Now Bach begins nine variations worth of fast and intense arpeggios. The progression is new, a simple i-ii-V, i-ii-V.
Variation 24
Intense arpeggios. The progression looks complicated, but it boils down to I – V7/iv – iv – V.
Variation 25
Intense arpeggios with rising and falling chromatic lines in the outer voices. The chords are an elaborated version of the ones in variation 24.
Variation 26
Intense arpeggios, kind of an inverted version of variation 25. The chromaticism in the middle voice is pretty delightful. Bach was probably not thinking, I’m going to write an augmented triad in the second beat of the second bar, he probably just wrote the countermelodies and enjoyed the cool sonority that popped out.
Variation 27
Intense arpeggios, shifting from three-voice counterpoint to four-voice. The harmony is a decorated version of yet another Andalusian cadence. The minor seventh chords at the end of the first bar and the beginning of the second are very smooth. You expect the F7 to resolve to Bb, but no, the E-flat hangs over to make a Bbsus chord. Then when you expect the suspension to resolve, it does, but Bach inverts the Bb chord in a crazy way so its root is way higher than you’re expecting. It’s peculiar, but it works.
Variation 28
Intense arpeggios. Bach is back to three-voice counterpoint, but with tense chromatically ascending harmony. This might be the most dramatic moment in the whole piece. It’s certainly the local peak of intensity. The harmony is complicated: the E7 is V7/V, but before we get to V itself, there are lots of chords in the way. The F is maybe a kind of deceptive cadence? The D7 temporarily tonicizes G, which is maybe predominant? Classical theory specialists might disagree with me, but that’s how I’d explain what’s happening here. Then the G#dim7 is another V7/V, which also chromatically connects the G and A chords. Beautiful.
Variation 29
Intense arpeggios. How heartbreaking is that leap from D up to B-flat at the beginning? So much pathos. Then the chords descend chromatically, releasing the tension built up in the previous few variations. The chords use a jazzy-sounding circle of fifths movement. At the beginning of the fourth bar, Bach manages to have all three voices descend even though the implied chords ascend from G7 to A7(b9). That is hip.
Variation 30
Final round of intense arpeggios. The top voice is still descending from the peak of variation 28. The bottom voice jumps around more unpredictably because of the chords: an Andalusian cadence that treats bVII, bVI and V as temporary key centers and precedes each one with its IV and V7 chords. The first chord is a surprise, a D chord rather than Dm like all other variations so far. It’s the dominant of G7, but also foreshadows the impending shift to D major. So fresh!
Variation 31
The intense arpeggios finally release. We get a simpler but still elaborated Andalusian cadence. There are more three-note hemiola groups. This looks harder to play than it is: it’s D natural minor, Bb major, D natural minor again, and then D melodic minor in the last bar.
Variation 32 (theme)
The theme returns! It starts by being fragmented into sixteenth-note scale runs for two beats. After that, it settles into the same block chords as the beginning of the piece. But then, in the last bar, it switches to a cool four-voice counterpoint sequence, with the top three voices descending chromatically. This sequence runs straight through into variation 33.
Variation 33 (theme)
The counterpoint sequence with the chromatically descending top voice continues from variation 32. Bach phrases straight through this section boundary; without looking at the MIDI or the score, I would have never guessed there was even a barline in there. As in variation 30, the first chord is D major instead of D minor, both as the dominant of G and to prefigure the shift to D major. Halfway through, the counterpoint thins to three voices, presaging the simpler two-voice texture that follows.
Variation 34
D major! The rhythms and chords get much simpler for a while. It’s like coming to a clearing in the forest. The rhythm is the most literal version of the chaconne pattern.
Variation 35
Simple two and three voice counterpoint on plain vanilla diatonic major chords, just scale runs in eighth notes for the most part.
Variation 36
More mellow pastoral counterpoint in eighth notes, though now expanding to three and four voices. We also step outside D major briefly, with a G-sharp in the E7 chord.
Variation 37
Yet more pastoral counterpoint, with an elegant two and three voice descending sequence through the second half of the variation. That pattern of chords in the last two bars is tricky to get right on guitar but sounds super cool when you do.
Variation 38
Call and response between sixteenth-note scale runs and arpeggios and block chords on a more complex progression with some new chords, including F#7. How hip is that arpeggiated Gmaj7 in the third bar? I know they didn’t have major seventh chords in the eighteenth century, that it’s all just voice-leading, but nevertheless, that’s how it sounds.
Variation 39
Arpeggios and scale descents over a simple, joyful progression: I-V-V/V-V. The arpeggios cover a wide octave range but are otherwise nursery-rhyme simple.
Variation 40
Nice simple staggered arpeggio sequence over I-V-vi-V. The F-sharp at the top of the sequence is the second highest note in the Chaconne.
Variation 41
Same progression and basic melodic concept as variation 40, but with groups of three repeated A’s on top. The figure has a regal quality to it.
Variation 42
Continuing the regal three-repeated-A motif in a lower register. Same chords as the previous couple of variations, but with V7/V inserted before the last bar.
Variation 43
Now Bach repeats more groups of notes, as many as five at a time, over a repeated A pedal tone. Using A as the bass note for an E7 chord is weird and “wrong,” and Bach knows that. The temporary dissonance between the A bass and G-sharp in the chord is highly effective. The converging counterpoint at the end continues straight into…
Variation 44
More repeated notes, now with a D pedal, and with a more active chord progression elaborated from I-V7/IV-IV-V. The diverging, converging and diverging lines in widely different registers are ear-grabbing. The last bar has some remarkably dissonant suspensions in it as the two descending lines rub against each other: it starts with F-sharp right next to G! If I had known Baroque music was so hip I would have dug into it sooner.
Variation 45
Double and triple stops in chaconne rhythm. There’s a new chord progression: I-V7-V7/vi-vi-V7/IV-IV-V7. In the second bar there’s a really nice dissonance as the D and E rub against each other, and in the third bar there’s an even spicier dissonance between B and C.
Variation 46
First two bars: A two-note chord, D and F-sharp with moving counterpoint underneath it. The two-note chord functions first as D, then as B minor, then as Gmaj7, and finally as D again. Very cool. Next, the two-note chord descends to a tense whole step between D and E (echoed from variation 45), then to a different major third between C-sharp and E. In the last two bars, there are three- and four-note block chords, then a double stop sequence descending the G major harmonized scale to a big A7 chord. Lovely. Not at all easy to play on the guitar!
Variation 47
Three-note block chords, including a very jazzy V7/IV with its seventh in the bass.
Variation 48
Angelic four-note block chords that sit exceptionally well on guitar, and that sound almost like classic rock. The progression repeats the V7/IV with its seventh in the bass from variation 47, this time resolving to Gmaj7 by holding out the F-sharp on top.
Variation 49
More angelic block chords, this time forming a gorgeous rising counterpoint. How satisfying is that chromatic lift in the bass from D/F# to G to E7/G# to A? So satisfying. Also so easy to play on guitar!
Variation 50
Huge three-note block chords with a descending chromatic melody on top that sounds practically bluesy. The second half has the same rising chromatic bassline as variation 49.
Variation 51
For the last two variations of the D major section, Bach establishes a new pattern, a regal-sounding repeated double-stop counterpoint with a nice Beatles-esque diatonic walkdown in the bass.
Variation 52
More royal-sounding doublestop counterpoint, with the most complex chromatic harmony of the D major section so far. It’s super intense having all the counterpoint converge gradually until it explodes out into a widely spread Em chord before landing on the final A7 that takes us back to D minor for the final section.
Variation 53
Back home in D minor, the rhythm settles back into the chaconne pattern. The chords resume doing the Andalusian cadence, though now it’s dressed up with a Bbmaj7 chord. There are some nifty enclosures in the arpeggio-like patterns in the second, third and fourth bars.
Variation 54
Pattern of dotted eighth and sixteenth-note arpeggios and scales over a complex abstraction of the Andalusian cadence. People keep telling me that minor seventh chords were not a thing in the Baroque era, but Bach keeps using them in this piece, so. Once again, Bach leads from F7 into Bbsus unexpectedly.
Variation 55
An elegant melodic pattern: rising four-note arpeggio, descending scalar turn repeated with a bass note in the middle. Does this pattern have a name? It’s cool. The first few notes spell out A7/D which is wildly hip. In the third bar Bach spells out an F augmented triad. The rhythm will be nearly all sixteenth notes for the next six variations.
Variation 56
Andalusian cadence with secondary dominants, creating a nice jazzy circle of fifths movement. The melody alternates between scale runs and wide arpeggios.
Variation 57
Complicated melodic pattern over lightly embellished Andalusian cadence. Sixteenth note pulse embellished by thirty-second note turns, picking up into all thirty-seconds briefly at the end. The enormous interval leaps make this a real bastard to play on guitar.
Variation 58
The majestically intense bariolage section begins over a straightforward Andalusian cadence. How sad is that repeated descending line? Pretty sad, but nowhere near as sad as the next variation.
Variation 59
Bariolage continues. The chords are still a straight Andalusian cadence, but the melody connects them chromatically. This variation paired with the previous one is the most beautiful thing in the history of Western music, as far as I’m concerned.
Variation 60
The bariolage breaks out of the Andalusian cadence, with more complex rising and falling counterpoint. This took forever to learn on the guitar, and was so totally worth it.
Variation 61
Arpeggiated triplets on a contrapuntally elaborated Andalusian cadence. It is very easy to lose track of what is going on with the rhythm because the arpeggio patterns don’t change direction on the bar lines like you expect them to. The implied chord voicings are pretty wild – in the third bar, Bach is implying Bbmaj7 with just a D, a B-flat, and an A, in that order! Having the top and bottom lines converge at the end is very satisfying.
Variation 62
Triplets on descending scale fragment patterns and rising arpeggios on an Andalusian cadence. The repeated notes give this a super hip ambiguity of phrasing at the micro level. As in variations 17, 18, and 31, this is easier to play than it looks if you know your scales: four beats of D natural minor, four beats of Bb major, and then four beats of D melodic minor, straight up and down the scale in thirty-second notes.
Variation 63 (theme)
Whew! Back home. This is identical to variation 1, very much like the head out of a jazz tune.
Variation 64 (theme)
Well, it’s not quite like the head out, because this is completely different from anything that has happened so far. It’s a lovely three-voice counterpoint sequence descending through V-i progressions in G minor, landing on the Tragic Baroque Ending riff with the C#dim7 arpeggio and big leap from G up to E and back. The final D minor closes the circle, filling in the empty first beat from the very beginning of the piece. I am spent!