The d-minor Chaconne is undoubtedly the most famous movement of all of Bach’s 6 Sonatas and Partitas for violin solo. So it is hardly surprising that it has seen many arrangements. Johannes Brahms marvelled at how a single staff of music could offer “a whole world of the deepest thoughts and the mightiest emotions”. He promptly made his own arrangement; it is for left hand alone, in order to come close to the restrictive framework of the original. He wrote enthusiastically: “A similar degree of difficulty, the manner of technique, the arpeggios – everything comes together to make me feel like a violinist!” This Henle Urtext edition by Valerie Woodring Goertzen is based on the text of the new Brahms Complete Edition. In her foreword she also offers fascinating details about the compositional history of this unusual work.
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Preface
Johannes Brahms (1833 – 97) was one of the 19th-century’s greatest admirers of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750). Brahms knew the Chaconne in d minor from the solo violin Partita BWV 1004 from performances of violinists and his own study. On 1 May 1853 Eduard Reményi played the Chaconne in a joint concert with Brahms in Celle. Brahms heard it … more
Critical Commentary
About the composer

Johannes Brahms
His significant output comprises chamber music, piano works, numerous choral compositions and songs (including settings of folk-song lyrics), as well as large-scale orchestral works in the 1870s and 1880s. His compositions are characterized by the process of developing variation. He is considered an antithesis to the New German School around Liszt, and an advocate of “absolute” music.
1833 | Born in Hamburg on May 7, the son of a musician. His first piano instruction with Willibald Cossel at age seven, then with Eduard Marxen; first public performances from 1843. |
1853 | Concert tour through German cities; he meets Schumann, who announces him as the next great composer in his essay “Neue Bahnen” (“New Paths”). A lifelong, intimate friendship develops with Clara Schumann. |
1854–57 | Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15. |
1857–59 | Choir director, pianist, and teacher at the royal court in Detmold. |
1859–61 | Director of the Hamburg Women’s Choir. |
1860 | Manifesto against the New Germans around Liszt. |
1863 | Cantata “Rinaldo,” Op. 50. |
1863–64 | Director of the Wiener Singakademie. |
1868 | Partial performance in Vienna of “A German Requiem,” Op. 45 (the complete work premiered in Leipzig in 1869) |
1871–74 | Artistic director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society of Friends of Music) in Vienna. |
1873 | Haydn Variations, Op. 56a, for orchestra. |
from 1877 | His symphonic output begins with the Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68 (begun 1862); composition of the Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73; the Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90 (1883); and Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 (1884–85): cantabile themes, chamber-music-like style. |
from 1878 | Travels in Italy. |
1878 | Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77, for Joseph Joachim. |
1881 | Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83, with a scherzo movement. |
1886 | Honorary president of Vienna’s Tonkünstlerverein (Association of Musicians). |
1897 | Four Serious Songs, Op. 121. Dies in Vienna on April 3. |