Chaconne - Bach - Segovia

“Of Course, in the guitar’s transcription literature, the variation set to top all variation sets is the Bach Chaconne. Originally composed for solo violin, and set as the concluding movement of the second partita, S. 1004, this extraordinary work contains 29 variations that convey almost every state of mind imaginable – from meditativeness to wild excitement, from pathos to joy – nearly as completely as, say, the “Goldberg” Variations, but in a far more compact statement. That this can have been meant for the solo violin makes it even more astonishing, since its contrapuntal strands demand an independence and clarity that the violin yields grudgingly. Not surprisingly, players on other instruments have sought to add the Chaconne to their repertoires, and transcriptions abound. Yet, despite the proliferation of Chaconne arrangements, the musical world was undoubtedly a little shocked when, in 1934, Andres Segovia announced that he would play the work on the guitar. Segovia’s Ciaconna transcription was a pivotal event in the instrument’s modern history: there were those who, until then, considered his achievements on the guitar novel and interesting, but who pointed out that many of the new works he performed were overwhelmingly Iberian, and that most of his Bach transcriptions were of short and not especially complex movements. With the Chaconne, Segovia showed conclusively that his instrument could sustain a work of this scope without sacrificing anything of the original’s spirit.”
Allan Kozinn

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