La Golondrina

Narciso Serradell Sevilla, Mexico

In 1861, Mexico was invaded by the Second French Empire, and Maximilian I (younger brother of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I) was instated as the monarch of what became known as the Second Mexican Empire. A young man named Narciso Serradell Sevilla was captured while resisting the invasion, and he was sent to France, where he taught music and Spanish for several years. In 1862, at age 19, Sevilla wrote a song called La Golondrina (“The Swallow”), which resonated with many of his fellow Mexican exiles because it told of a migrating swallow recalling its homeland.

After the reign of Maximilian I ended in 1867, Sevilla and many of his countrymen returned home, and thousands of members of the French army (including its marching band) fled into what is now the American Southwest. Concurrently, many Polish and German immigrants began settling in the same region, bringing along their native polkas and waltzes. Needless to say, the setting was ripe for musical development. The confluence of imported and regional traditions sparked the development of several new styles in northwestern Mexico and the southwestern U.S., including Norteño music and Western Swing. La Golondrina became a mainstay in the Western Swing repertoire by the 1930s and is now considered a classic of the style.

Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies, 1930s Texas

The tune has been recorded numerous times in different time signatures and under a variety of titles throughout the last century. The earliest known recording was made in 1906 by Señor Francisco, but perhaps better known are the recordings by Chet Atkins (instrumental, 1955), Nat King Cole (1962), and Placido Domingo (1984). Songwriters Felice and Boudleaux Bryant rewrote the tune with English lyrics and entitled it She Wears My Ring, which was sung by Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, and Ray Price, among others. It was also rewritten and recorded in German as Du sollst nicht weinen (“Thou Shalt Not Cry”, 1968) and in Swedish as Mitt Sommarlov (“My Summer Break”, 1970), both of which became chart-topping singles in Europe.

   

I remember hearing La Golondrina frequently at the fiddle contests I entered as a teenager, especially those in the western U.S. I always admired the beautiful double-stops (often in third intervals) and the apparent difficulty it took to pull them off. After learning the tune myself, I began using it essentially as a double-stop exercise.

The arrangement of La Golondrina presented here is based on a version of the tune popularized by Western Swing players Milton Brown, Cliff Bruner, and Bob Wills. I expand upon this version by incorporating almost every available double-stop interval in thirds between the 1st and 5th positions. You can now practice your thirds to the beautiful tune of La Golondrina!

Cliff Bruner and his Texas Wanderers, 1937

Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies, 1935

Canadian Medley (The Laird of Thrums Strathspey)

Jean Carignan, Quebec, Canada

The three pieces of music contained in the Carrignan medley; The Laird o’ Thrums Strathspey, The Laird of Drumblair Strathspey and The Gladstone Reel are all written by one of the greatest fiddle-composers of all time, the Scotsman James Scott Skinner.

Born in1847 in Aberdeen, Scotland and who also coincidentally shares my own birthday of August 5th, Skinner began composing for the violin at age 17, and in the end of his career, some 600 compositions mostly published by himself create a unique accomplishment in the world of fiddling. Reportedly Skinner went bankrupt with his publishing efforts as a business man, but his pieces are some of the most performed repertoire in Scottish folk music circles.

Skinner learned the violin and cello from his older brother and often played bass lines on the cello at dances when he was very young. He was accepted into a 6-year apprenticeship at age 11 to further his violin and cello studies in Manchester and performed throughout Britain as a child. Still in his teens, he took part in a Highland dancing competition in Ireland, winning first prize in the “Sword Dance” accompanying himself on fiddle and beating John McNeill, an acknowledged champion.

In the 1870s, Skinner performed concerts in Scotland and began to include his own compositions of Scottish fiddling repertoire in addition to the virtuoso violin pieces by Niccolo Paganini and others. In 1893 he toured the United States and Canada with wellknown piper and champion Highland Dance Willie MacLennan and by 1899 he was one of the very first Scottish musicians to be recorded. His well documented recording career lasted from 1905 to 1922. In 1911 he performed at the opening of the London Palladium and in 1925 was a top bill on five tours of the U.K. In 1926 Skinner returned to the United States to enter a reel and jig fiddle competition but had differences with the pianist and perhaps the rules of the contest and strode off the stage to default. But the legacy of his original pieces endured, inspiring the greatest fiddlers to come after him like Jean Carignan.

French-Canadian fiddling is one of the most exciting and virtuosic string styles in the Americas. It blends Scottish repertoire, particularly Strathspeys and other dance tunes, with elements of French and Native American styles. It is a beautiful example of musical cross-pollination, and one of its greatest practitioners is the fiddler Jean Carignan.

“Ti-Jean” Carignan was the ultimate folk violinist. He incorporated classical technique seamlessly into his renditions of French-Canadian, Irish, and Scottish tunes. Walking a fine line between “violin” and “fiddle” music, he achieved the best of both worlds. For the most part, Carignan avoided playing in higher positions in the interest of maintaining the “folk” quality of his music, but he fearlessly tackled spicatto bowing, pizzicato, 16th-note runs, and dramatic dynamic variations.

Carignan was born in 1916 in Lévis, Québec. His father, trained on the fiddle by a local Native American musician, performed at parties and dances throughout the Eastern Townships. Carignan picked up the fiddle and imitated his father’s regional style at a young age, but he also became inspired by early 78 rpm recordings of a number of other fiddlers, including Joseph Allard (a fellow Canadian), Michael Coleman and James Morrison (natives of Ireland), J. Scott Skinner (Scotland), and classical great Jascha Heifetz (Lithuania/U.S.). In spite of his father’s strong skepticism, Carignan pursued music vigorously and became a professional performer in his teens.

The way Carignan infused classical technique and sensitivity into his Irish, Scottish, and French-Canadian repertoire was unprecedented; however, his boldness came at a cost. The Québecois political movement of the 1960s and ‘70s coincided with the revival of folk traditions throughout the province, and Carignan was highly criticized for performing repertoire that wasn’t “native.” Apparently, he lost some close musical friends over the issue, but he defended his artistic choices, and indeed, he ultimately developed a style that spread far wider than the borders of Québec. He created his own musical language, and he spoke it with great fluency.

Carignan’s fiddling came to the attention of classical violin great Yehudi Menuhin, and the two recorded together and appeared as a duo on a number of television and radio broadcasts. The admiration Menuhin had for Carignan was apparent to all who witnessed their collaboration. “In his hands,” Meunhin once said, “the violin is a universal folk instrument with a creative vitality, a dynamic expression of its own…shaped by Jean’s own lively, inventive intelligence.”

The Strathspey – one of the Scottish dance forms that Carignan mastered – originated in the “strath,” or valley, of the River Spey in Northeast Scotland. As with most traditional dance forms, the tempos at which Strathspeys are performed have increased over time, especially as they have migrated from the dance hall to the stage. They are in 4/4, like reels, but their reliance on the “Scotch snap” gives them an altogether different groove. This dotted rhythm is short-long: a quick downbow followed by an aggressive upstroke that sustains longer. (You may recall that this is the opposite of ragtime, which utilizes a long-short bowing rhythm.) Strathspeys also utilize spicatto (bowing “off the string”) to accentuate the rhythmic pulse.

Fascinating Rhythm

George Gershwin

“I like to get the most effect out of the fewest notes.” - George Gerswhin

Fascinating Rhythm, one of the classics of jazz repertoire, was written by George and Ira Gershwin in 1924. George came up with the first eight-bar fragment while finishing up the score for the musical Primrose in London, and upon returning to his home city of New York, he showed the tune to his brother and frequent collaborator, Ira, who initially responded, “For God’s sake, George, what kind of lyric do you write to a rhythm like that?” Indeed, the melody, which consists largely of polyrhythmic variations on a six-note phrase, doesn’t seem terribly lyric-friendly. (George had at first nicknamed the tune “Syncopated City”.) However, the melody grew on Ira, and he soon came up with a title that reflected the melody and fit the primary six-note phrase perfectly: Fascinating Rhythm.

According to George, crafting the full set of lyrics generated “many a hot argument” between Ira and him, especially in regard to the placement of accents. Although Ira eventually did his brother’s bidding, many surmise that he retaliated against George in the lyrics themselves, in which he lashes out at the pesky rhythm: Won’t you take a day off, decide to run along / Somewhere far away off, and make it snappy

In the last line, Ira also complains, “Won’t you please stop picking on me?” George and Ira may have been world-class songwriters, but they were still brothers!

The Gershwins included Fascinating Rhythm in Lady, Be Good!, a Broadway collaboration with Guy Bolton, Fred Thompson, and Fred and Adele Astaire that premiered in 1924. It was one of the principal songs in the musical, and as was the case in many Broadway shows during the 1920s, it was reprised near the end with an altered set of lyrics (“Fascinating wedding, that sure appeals to me / Fascinating wedding, I hear you calling”). The song was a hit with the audience; a critic for The New York Herald Tribune wrote, “When at 9:15, they sang and danced ‘Fascinating Rhythm’, the callous Broadwayites cheered them as if their favorite halfback had planted the ball behind the goal posts after an 80-yard run.”

Stephane Grappelli 1979

George and the Astaires recorded the song for Columbia Records in 1926, and it has been a standard in the American songbook ever since. Although there is no visual record of Lady, Be Good! featuring the Astaires, the musical was filmed for MGM in 1941 with different entertainers. Interestingly, the MGM version follows a different plot than the original, and it features two black pianists anchoring the orchestra (instead of two white pianists, as in the original), perhaps in an attempt to stay more authentic to the musical style, given that most of the highly regarded stride pianists in the 1920s were African American.

A number of authors, critics, and composers have expressed high praise for Fascinating Rhythm  including Aaron Copland himself, who described the song as “rhythmically not only the most fascinating but the most original jazz song yet composed.” Howard Pollack refers to the song as “paradigmatic to the Jazz Age,” while Ted Gioia asserts that “no one moved more aggressively in mixing popular song with a jazz sensibility than George Gershwin.” It is the rhythm, of course, that remains the most innovative and compelling attribute of the song; Gioia also writes that, in building the hook from a metric displacement, the song “anticipates the riff-based charts that would usher in the Swing Era.” Deena Rosenberg writes that “such rhythmic complexity was rare in American theater song of the time; so was such a close blending of words and music. The rhythm is so absorbing, so extraordinary.” Gerald Mast sums it up best: “The result of this playful trickery is a rhythmically complex song about rhyth- mic complexity.”

George and Ira Gerswin

George and Ira GerswinIn 1956, my mentor, jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, recorded his own arrangement of Fascinating Rhythm  which features repeated half-step modulations near the end. When I recorded the song with my Hot Swing ensemble and singer Jane Monheit in 2002, I used Stephane’s arrangement as a springboard for my own version, which modulates by half-steps throughout. Stephane and I opted to turn a rhythmic journey into a harmonic one as well.

Jerusalem Ridge

Kenny Baker in 1974

Jerusalem Ridge is a bluegrass fiddle tune made popular by legendary fiddler and Kentucky native Kenny Baker. Kenny co-wrote the tune with Bill Monroe in 1970 as a member of Bill’s legendary Blue Grass Boys. As the story goes, the band was staying at the Henry Clay Hotel in Ashland, Kentucky one night in August of that year, when, around 1 or 2 a.m., Bill invited Kenny to his hotel room. He asked Kenny to come up with a bunch of musical ideas on the spot until he heard a few that he liked. Kenny obliged, and the three ideas Bill enjoyed the most were made into the first, second, and fourth parts of a new tune he called Jerusalem Ridge  (Bill had already written the third part). This tune is widely regarded as one of the greatest bluegrass tunes ever written.

Kenny’s journey from the Kentucky hills to bluegrass stardom was an unlikely one. Born on June 26, 1926, Kenny played the guitar as a young man, even though his father, grandmother, and grandfather were all fiddlers. As a teenager, he joined the Navy, and during his 33-month tour of the South Pacific, he joined a “hillbilly act” that played songs by Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Roy Acuff. While stationed in Okinawa during World War II, he started fiddling at square dances organized by Red Cross nurses, although he was not very adept at the instrument yet. It wasn’t until he heard Western Swing fiddle legend Bob Wills’ version of Silver Bells on the radio that he developed a more serious interest in it. At the time, he was working on a destroyer repair unit base in Hollandia, New Guinea, so he didn't have much of an opportunity to learn a new instrument; however, to keep his dreams afloat, he did request that the radio station play Silver Bells every day, and they did. (Occasionally, the radio announcer would ask on air if Kenny was listening.)

Kenny returned to Kentucky at age 21 and became devoted to learning the fiddle. He familiarized himself with Bob Wills’ catalog as well as with the fiddling of Nashville star Howdy Forrester, Georgia Wildcats jazz and old-time fiddling pioneer Clayton McMichen, and fiddle virtuoso Arthur Smith (composer of Florida Blues, which appears in Book II). While honing his fiddling, Kenny worked at a coal mine. He didn’t get his first official fiddling gig until 1952.

Five years later, in 1957, Kenny joined the Blue Grass Boys, apparently without ever having heard any bluegrass music before. Clearly, his lack of familiarity with the style didn’t hinder him; he remained in the band for 27 years, and for much of his tenure, Bill introduced him as the “greatest fiddler in bluegrass music”- a title almost no one disputes today.

Kenny Baker and Bill Monroe

I had the great fortune of recording a duet version of Jerusalem Ridge with Kenny himself for my album Heroes (1993). The arrangement of the tune in this book is similar to the one on the album, except I expand the role of the 2nd violin by giving it plenty of chops. I also introduce a section that features a 20- to 30-second canon on two parts of the melody. The result is an exciting, adventurous duet that exhibits some of the energy and rhythm of a full-band rendition of the tune.

I was just a kid when I first saw Bill, Kenny, and the rest of the Blue Grass Boys perform Jerusalem Ridge at a festival in the mid-1970s. Although it is only one of many great bluegrass tunes composed by Kenny and Bill, it certainly stood out in the repertoire, and I was mesmerized by it. Its minor-key setting may have been inspired by earlier modal old-time tunes like Glory in the Meeting House, a tune captured on recording by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress around the time Bill formed the Blue Grass Boys. (Lomax recorded performances of this tune by two other Kentucky fiddlers, Luther Strong and William H. Stepp, the latter of whom is the composer of Stepp Down Hoedown in Book II).

La Bamba

Ritchie Valens

Para bailar la bamba
Para bailar la bamba
Se necesita
Una poca de gracia
Una poca de gracia
Y otra cosita
“Dance the Bamba, needing a little grace” (or “humor”)became one of rock and roll’s signature anthems. La Bamba is also one of the oldest Mexican Sones Jarochos, a traditional song form originating in a region that includes southern Veracruz, eastern Oaxaca and north­ern Tabasco. The instrumentation of this traditional Mexican music included violin, bass, harp, tambourine, quijada (the jaw of a donkey) and a tarima (a foot-high platform made of wood for dancers to add percussion to the music with their feet). The roots of the music com­bine from Spain, Africa and the native Aztecs. It is believed that the enslaved Africans in Mexico created the tarimas after being deprived of drums by their captors.

African syncopated rhythms have played an important role in all music of the Western hemisphere. The accenting, anticipating or skipping of certain beats - sometimes emphasizing beats or parts of beats not typically stressed in European music - created a rhythmic syncopation that became the heartbeat and soundtrack of the new world. This new rhythmic approach underpinned the development of South American musical styles such as habanera, bolero, tango, rumba, salsa, mambo, merengue and cumbia in the same way that African rhythmic syncopation was integral in the creation of North American styles such as hoedown, ragtime, blues, country, jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, rock and roll and hip-hop.

La Bamba itself harkens to a single event that took place in the port of Veracruz in today’s Mexico. In 1683, the 7,000 inhabitants of Vera­cruz were largely unprotected from pirate attacks even though the nearby San Juan de Ulua fort was substantially fortified. The Dutch pirate Lorenz de Graaf and his multi-national crew raided Veracruz killing many of its Spanish citizens and pillaging the town. After the nightmarish attack was over, many of the remaining Spanish wanted to leave Veracruz compelling the King of Spain to erect a defensive wall around the entire town. The King made it compulsory for young men of the city to serve in the military in order to defend the port, citizens were involved in defensive drills and alarm bells were installed. The term “bambarria” was used by the local native and slave populations to mock the Spanish inhabitants and pompous local officials in their attempts to prevent the next pirate attack. They believed that the attack had been a fluke and would not happen again. One theory links the origin of La Bamba with the bambarria - a song taking voice from the social situation. However, because many towns near Veracruz have African names, La Bamba could have come more directly from African slaves originating from the Mbambo or Bambala tribes in the Congo and Angola regions of Africa.

By the 17th century, the once peaceful relationship between the Portuguese and Africans was disrupted as the European slave trade escalated. In 1647, Salvador Correia of Brazil sent an expedition of fifteen ships to conquer Angola to facilitate the slave trade to South America. He and other Spaniards brought slaves to Mexico from Angola and Congo including those from the Bamba region and the Bambala tribe. In either case it is certain that the origins of La Bamba date back hundreds of years.

Just as English, Irish, German and French immigrants brought the violin to colonial America, the Spanish brought the violin to Central and South America. Much like their North American counterparts, African slaves in Latin America were drawn to play the instrument. Many slaves escaped into the rain forest and mountainous regions to live with indigenous people and became integrated into the folk culture. The violin became inextricably linked to all the traditional music styles created by the cross-pollination of the native and immigrant populations making up North and South American 400-year old culture.

Flamenco rhythms from Spain’s oppressed gypsy populations, became trademarks of what is South American music culture. For hundreds of years, one would hear La Bamba informed by these styles on the violin, jaranas, guitar, and harp with lyrics improvised by the perform­ers. It was in 1958 that an adaptation by Los Angeles Hispanic singer and guitarist Ritchie Valens, made La Bamba one of early rock and roll’s greatest songs.

Born Richard Steven Valenzuela, this teenaged Mexican-American rock and roll pioneer gave birth to Latin or Chicano rock. Richie grew up experiencing his parents’ love of Mariachi and Flamenco music and combined this style with his own affection for R&B and Jump Blues. After penning the million-selling doo-wop styled song “Donna” (written for his high school sweetheart), Ritchie Valens switched gears recalling a Mexican song he grew up listening to in his family home. He added a rock and roll beat and became the first person to use Spanish lyrics in a rock recording. In 1958, the infectious new treatment of the La Bamba shot up into the top 20 of the pop charts.

On February 3rd, 1959 during a rock and roll package tour in the Midwest, a small plane carrying the young stars Buddy Holly, JP (The Big Bopper) Richardson and the teenaged Ritchie Valens crashed leaving no survivors. The loss of these young men sent shock waves around the world and the tragic incident became acknowledged as “the day the music died.” These young rock musicians were just get­ting started in their already meteoric careers - Valens’ own career was a mere eight months old. La Bamba became an anthem for the rebellious rock and roll generation. The anti-establishment sentiment of 1960s America was similar to that of the 1600s in Mexico and defined a national spirit and coming of age. It is not surprising that this music would have been a part of both. The lyrics “yo no soy mainero, soy capitan” or “I am no mere sailor, I am captain!” speak to the American (both North and South) spirit of the common man wanting to take control of his own destiny.

Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos

Valens’ short career inspired the Latin rock movement. In 1987, the Hollywood motion picture La Bamba featured Valens’ life story portrayed by actor Lou Diamond Phillips. The music for the film was provided by the band Los Lobos, one of Valens’ acclaimed Latin rock successors. For the film, the group recorded a version of La Bamba that was intended to imitate Valens’ original classic but somehow miraculously seemed to improve on the original. This new version of La Bamba became another world wide sensation, this time reaching the #1 position on the pop charts in both the U.S. and the U.K. The guitar solo by Los Lobos’ Ceasar Rojas took on the musical ideas and character of the 1958 original solo by session player Carol Kaye, but escalated them to new musical heights. This famous instrumen­tal solo is a wonderful blend of Chicano rock stratocaster guitar and the traditional violin lyricism of Mexico that Los Lobos knew well. In this book’s version, Rojas’ guitar solo is transcribed and adapted to violin without any note changes. The overall violin arrangement was inspired by both Valens and Los Lobos and the inclusion of the violin brings the music full circle to the old Mexican folk tradition that will forever be a part of our collective story.

Bach Partita No. 2

 The solo violin compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) are among the greatest contributions to musical literature ever written. Regarded as the father of western harmony and counterpoint, Bach and his music together with the stories of his own performances, improvisation and great violin playing create an important artistic bridge from western European musical culture to the Americas. Bach is remembered today as an organist mostly but, in fact, he was a professional violinist with playing duties in Weimar, Germany during the early 1700s.

In 1720, Bach, at age 35, completed the composition of all his solo violin works while he was director of music at the court of Leopold, Prince of Anhalt near Berlin, Germany. The 5 1/2 year court appointment did not include organ performance or church music duties, so he turned to his violin playing and instrumental compo­sition for the length of his tenure. If his unaccompanied violin works were ever performed in his lifetime, he was likely to have performed them himself for Prince Leopold.

For more than a century there has been conjecture concerning Bach’s intentions for his solo violin music. Many serious students of classical music take pride in using Bach’s bowings and articulation verbatim even though experts agree that the Baroque era was filled with improvising musicians and player-composers. One could question whether Bach envisioned an entire population of future musicians discovering his music from the single handwritten manuscripts he left of each piece. And further, one has to imagine if he could have foreseen the mass copying, engraving and publishing of his music not experienced in his lifetime.

It is at least possible, and maybe even likely, that Bach did not intend for anyone beyond himself to perform his solo violin works. Scholars have speculated that a handful of Bach’s violin-playing colleagues may have performed his unaccompanied violin works but there is no record of it. Also, Bach’s manuscripts suggest few fingerings in general. His violin phrases could be naturally played on more than one area of the fingerboard. If the music were intended primarily for himself, he would have remembered most of his favorite fingerings giving himself a little reminder here and there as he did occasionally. Since fingerings determine which string is played on and where the bow needs to cross the strings, most bowings would likely follow any given fingerings. Therefore Bach’s bowings can be considered both specific in some cases and general phrase markings in other cases. Bowings in Bach’s day were freely interpreted on solo repertoire and the phrase markings could serve merely as general guides to a natural improviser. Bach and composers from his era were composing in real time. They prepared music for the week and most likely moved on to more music the next week. The idea is substantiated by the stories of Bach’s wife using original manuscript of her husband’s to wrap fish in! There was simply not much of a need to keep old music laying around. Once it had already been performed for the Prince, it would be prudent to work up something new.

Students who have learned Bach’s solo violin music faithfully via modern mimeographs and academic editions may be in for a surprise. Most of the well-known editions have altered what Bach actually wrote regarding bowings and articulations as well as the appearance and nature of the musical notation itself. Consequently I have transcribed the Allemande as Bach wrote it for this book. This transcription includes and honors Bach’s concept of note beaming and also renders the . and . measures at the beginnings and endings of some staff systems. This replication also preserves Bach’s original bowings and articulation. Of special note is a 16-note down-bow slur in the ninth measure. This directive by Bach’s hand has been omitted in most subsequent editions. It is clear that Bach wanted 16 notes slurred in one down-bow in that ninth mea­sure because the bowing that follows works out correctly. There is no need for bowing this passage in groups of eight notes and using hook bowings to make the bow distribution come out evenly as found in many endorsed and recommended editions of this piece.

In Bach’s time, vibrato was used as ornamentation if at all. Continuous vibrato as a component of general tone production was a feature of the Romantic period and was not used by Bach. However, Francesco Gemanani and Leopold Mozart – contemporary composers and teachers of Bach – stated in the early 1700s that they preferred some use of the vibrato in performance. Also, the instruments were much different in Bach’s time. If one wanted to interpret this music as Bach himself might have sounded, he would need to use a short-necked fiddle strung with sheep gut resting the instrument on his collarbone without a chinrest and would also need to use a bow that arched away from the bow hair.

More confusion about authentic Bach centers around the belief that since many of Bach’s solo violin pieces have dance name titles, they must be music written for various dance genres. There is no evidence, however, that Bach’s solo violin music was ever intended to accompany danc­ing. There is no doubt that this music was inspired by various popular dance genres of the day. It is a testa­ment to Bach’s progressivism that he brought this dance influenced music into very formal settings. Because Bach’s virtuosic solo violin music was not intended for dancing it is not necessary to play it at steady dance tempos or at a single dynamic or devoid of soloistic liberties and dramatic rubatos.

On the other hand, many modern violinists have performed the Allemande at half the tempo intended for that dance thereby masking the original mood and the spirit of the music as well as losing the integrity of Bach’s syncopated phrasing. Bach composed many cantatas and much serious church music. It is most probable that the dance-influenced solo violin music was intended as a contrast from this composer showing even more great variety and scope. It is counterintuitive to perform these pieces without addressing at least the sprit of the dance contained in the musical phrasing. An interesting point with regard to the particular dance here is that an allemande was a social dance involving couples. One of the distinguishing characteristics is for the gentleman to turn his lady partner. The term “allemande” was used for centuries in dance vocabulary all the way to the Americas in square dancing: “allemand left, swing your partner, do-si-do.”

Bach’s solo violin works were largely forgotten in the century after Bach’s death and rediscovered and popularized as recently as the 19th Century by the great violinist Joseph Joachim although Felix Mendelssohn and Pablo Casals are the most noted for rediscovering Bach’s instru­mental music. There is a distinct possibility that Joachim’s 1904 recording of some of the Bach pieces could have been considerably slower in tempo than he would have otherwise performed them as a younger musician. There are many instances of performers taking much slower tempos in their later performing years. Joachim was 75 years old in 1904 – quite old for that time. However, Joachim’s slower tempos from the end of his lifetime may have unwittingly set an incorrect precedent for subsequent performances of these dance-inspired movements.

Perhaps the most telling indicator in the controversy of how to properly interpret Bach is the simple yet perhaps forbidding “repeat sign.” It stands to reason that the very existence of repeat signs – rather than an expanded form including developed treatment of the music already presented by the composer himself – suggests that the performer was expected to vary the music the second time around. This practice has been handed down in the American tradition of performing music from this same time period – American fiddle tunes. It stands to reason that Baroque era performers in America and Europe alike were expected to exhibit their creativity and theoretical knowledge during the repeats of the composed music. Isn’t it interesting and indeed wonderful that it is the American fiddlers who may have more faithfully perpetuated this aspect of what Bach himself intended!