I find Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for the solo violin some of the most beautiful, complex music I’ve ever heard. In the partitas, Bach masters the art of creating multiple melody lines on a solo violin.
You can read the history and technical details on the Wikipedia page.
The Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (BWV 1001–1006) are a set of six works composed by Johann Sebastian Bach.
The set was completed by 1720 but was not published until 1802 by Nikolaus Simrock in Bonn. Even after publication, it was largely ignored until the celebrated violinist Joseph Joachim started performing these works. Today, Bach’s ‘Sonatas and Partitas are an essential part of the violin repertoire, and they are frequently performed and recorded.
Sheet music is also available from the WLBOTT Collection.
They’re Dances!
I find it fascinating that the partitas are in the form of dances –
Although still making use of the usual baroque style of allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue, with some omissions and the addition of galanteries, new elements were introduced into each partita to provide variety.
One of the first musicians to record Bach’s Partitas was Joseph Szigeti.
Joseph Szigeti (5 September 1892 – 19 February 1973) was a Hungarian violinist.
Born into a musical family, he spent his early childhood in a small town in Transylvania.
Scene from Máramaros county, near Szigeti’s childhood home By Alexandru Babos – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2152628
Following a bout of tuberculosis that required a stay in a sanatorium in Switzerland, Szigeti settled in Geneva, where he became Professor of Violin at the local conservatory in 1917. It was in Geneva that he met his future wife, Wanda Ostrowska, and at roughly the same time he became friends with the composer Béla Bartók. Both relationships were to be lifelong.
(left) By Cushing Memorial Library Texas A&M University (right) The WLBOTT Makeover
The Wikipedia page for Joseph Szigeti has a 30-second snippet from a recording of “Preludio” from J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E major. He made the recording in 1908. Our research team was wondering if the recording was made on a wax cylinder. Elder G to the rescue!
Short answer: probably not a wax cylinder.
What was happening in 1908?
By 1908, recording technology was in a transitional moment, but one thing was clear: Disc recording (flat records) had largely taken over from wax cylinders for commercial music.
Here’s the landscape:
Wax cylinders (Edison-style):
Popular in the late 1800s
Still around in 1908, but fading for music distribution
More common for dictation and niche uses by then
Disc records (78 rpm shellac):
Dominated by companies like Victor and Gramophone Company
Already the main format for professional musicians
Easier to mass-produce and distribute
So what about Szigeti’s 1908 recording?
Given that:
Joseph Szigeti was a serious young artist entering the professional recording world, and
Early classical recordings were typically made for commercial release,
It’s overwhelmingly likely that his 1908 recording was made using the acoustic horn process onto a disc (a 78 rpm record), not a wax cylinder.
What did that actually look like?
Imagine this:
No microphones
A giant metal horn like a brass sunflower
Szigeti standing very carefully positioned
The violin aimed almost like a weapon at the horn
A cutting stylus physically engraving vibrations into a rotating disc
It was less “recording session” and more “acoustic choreography.”
One subtle twist
There were still some cylinder recordings being made around that time, especially by Edison’s company—but classical violinists tied to European labels were almost always recorded on disc.
So unless that snippet comes from a very unusual archive source, you’re almost certainly hearing a disc recording.
By 1940, the outbreak of World War II forced the Szigetis to leave Europe for the United States[…]. They settled in California, where Wanda[Szigetis’ wife], always fond of nature, was delighted to be able to raise her own garden. In a letter to a friend, Szigeti describes their California life:
Wanda is happy, doing wonders with her gardening, chicken and rabbit raising, preserve and pâté de foie making. She doesn’t budge from our place, doesn’t want to come back to New York even for a visit, which I, for one, can well understand! Two dogs, an aviary full of exotic birds, tomatoes, grapes, strawberries, asparagus, artichokes, lovely flowers (camellias too!), right in our own little world.
Image by Elder G
Szigeti narrowly escaped being killed in the plane crash that claimed the life of movie star Carole Lombard in January 1942. Szigeti, who was on his way to Los Angeles for a concert, was forced to give up his seat on TWA Flight 3 at a refueling stop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to allow the plane to take on 15 soldiers who, it being wartime, had priority. The plane, off course at night and with wartime blackout conditions in effect, crashed into a mountain cliff after takeoff from an intermediate stop in Las Vegas, killing everyone on board.
