One of many Bach arrangements made by Busoni, his version of the Chaconne was first published as part of a larger volume in 1916, although the copyright dates back to 1902. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.” Luciano Berio later added that his Sequenza VIII for solo violin was, “ inevitably, a homage to that high-point of music, the Chaconne of the Partita in D minor by Johann Sebastian Bach”.īusoni chose to transcribe “ that high-point of music” for his own instrument, the piano.

Brahms wrote: “… the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. How, though, can a composer resist the opportunity to work with such music? With its 64 variations and two minor-key outer sections framing a major-key central interlude, the Chaconne is longer than the rest of the Partita’ s movements combined, and its impact on later composers has been far-reaching. Bach’ s legendary Chaconne, from his D minor Partita for solo violin, BWV1004 (composed by 1720) has been arranged many times, despite Bach’ s stipulation that he did not wish for the work’ s implicit harmonies to be realised. But it takes great skill for variation form to be elevated from a pleasing set of audibly-related segments to a work of real coherence and depth, in which the original idea is not merely varied but also developed and drawn out, its innermost complexities revealed.

The art of varying a theme, whether original or borrowed, is one which most composers attempt at one stage or another, whether as an exercise in honing the technical aspects of their craft, or as a more profound exploration of the different elements suggested by a melody.

Chaconne with 49 variations