Violin Concerto in E major, BWV 1042

The violin concertos of JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH belong to the most repertoire concert works, played by amateurs and great virtuosos alike. It is customary to list them as the first concerto, in A minor, BWV 1041, and the second in E major, BWV 1042, their actual chronology being unknown. It has been suggested that they were written between 1717 and 1721 in Köthen or around 1730 in Leipzig. Between 1717 and 1723 Bach was Kapellmeister at the court of Prince Leopold Anhalt in Köthen, where he composed his Brandenburg Concertos. Since Prince Leopold adhered to the Reformed confession, his church services required no special music, which enabled Bach to focus on new secular instrumental works, such as sonatas, concertos, and orchestral suites. Christoph Wolf argues that the violin concertos were written around 1730-1731 in Leipzig, where Bach conducted the Collegium Musicum. The ensemble was founded at the university in 1702 by the then law student Georg Philipp Telemann, and was composed primarily of amateur students conducted by a professional. Thus Bach directed the Collegium Musicum from 1729 until the early 1740s (with a brief interruption from 1737 to 1739). It is interesting to know that the Collegium Musicum subsequently grew into the Gewandhaus Orchestra, which established itself as an important musical institution not only in Leipzig, but also on a German and European scale. During Bach's tenure with the Collegium Musicum, he had to write various genres of instrumental music: overtures, duos and trio sonatas, concertos, which he often performed with his sons or with his students. A lesser known fact is that Bach was also a good violinist. The words of his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, credited with authenticity, confirm this: 'From his youth to a comparatively advanced age he played the violin with precision and inspired intonation, maintaining much better form than the harpsichord. He fully understood the possibilities of all stringed instruments". In this aspect Bach followed his father Johann Ambrosius, who worked as a violinist in Erfurt and Eisenach. Johann Sebastian owned a violin made by the luthier Jakob Steiner, whose instruments were highly valued. As a result, Bach bequeathed to the generations to come eight sonatas for violin and harpsichord, six sonatas/partitas for solo violin solo in his Brandenburg Concertos, a Concerto for flute, violin and harpsichord and a double violin concerto. An admirer of Antonio Vivaldi from an early age, Bach adopted his concerto form, standardised in the 17th century as three-movement: fast - slow - fast. He also interpreted Vivaldi's ritornello form, whose features are found in all three movements of his violin concertos. While working in Köthen with the Collegium Musicum, Bach transcribed the two violin concertos into harpsichord concertos: the A Minor concerto was adapted as the Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra in G Minor (BWV 1058), and the E Major one into the Concerto for Harpsichord in D Major (BWV 1054). Both versions are actively present in performance practice as equally adequate to the instrument and uncompromising. This organic nature of Bach's music in different performance configurations and tonalities proves that the essence of his musical message is not dependent on timbre and coloristic attractiveness inherent in later styles, but on his mastery of the basic musical levels: melodic, polyphonic, harmonic, and structural.