Our “Sonata Series” concerts, starting this Saturday, will open with Johann Sebastian Bach’s sonata BWV 1029, originally written for the viola da gamba. It will be played on the viola by Nicholaus Yee, with Junko Nojima playing a harpsichord in Long Beach and San Pedro, and a piano in Yorba Linda. The other two composers on the program, Henri Vieuxtemps and Rebecca Clarke , wrote for the modern viola, and this sonata by JS Bach gives an interesting historical perspective on the evolution of writing solo works for string instruments in that range of tonalities.

In his lifetime, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) was a stellar church musician, teacher, but he was best renowned as a virtuoso organist. Most his compositions were by-products of these “other jobs”. After early posts in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen (1703–1708), he served as court organist and concertmaster in Weimar (1708–1717), composing iconic keyboard and sacred organ works. As Kapellmeister in Köthen (1717–1723), he focused on secular instrumental music, producing masterpieces like the Brandenburg Concertos. Finally, as Thomaskantor in Leipzig (1723–1750), Bach created landmark sacred compositions, including his Passions and the Mass in B minor, establishing a legacy that forever changed Western music. But as we saw at our last concert, it was Felix Mendelssohn, as late as 1829, who made this legacy known to the general public as “a composer”.

Bach’s career was thus defined by adaptation and musical transcendence. At each career stage, he immersed himself in his required duties: composing church cantatas and organ works in Mühlhausen and Weimar, and focusing on chamber and orchestral music in Cöthen under Prince Leopold.

In 1723, Bach moved to Leipzig, and over the 27 years he spent there, until his death, his focus shifted. He initially composed extensive church cantatas, which evolved into ambitious, large-scale sacred works like the St. Matthew Passion. After 1729, having amassed a multi-year repertoire of cantatas, he assumed leadership of the Leipzig Collegium Musicum. This secular society performed at Zimmermann’s coffee house, providing Bach with an elite pool of musicians, supplemental income, and a venue to return to instrumental composition. Throughout his career, Bach pushed genre boundaries, creating hybrids and frequently repurposing his own themes or modeling works after contemporaries like Vivaldi.

Scholars date Bach’s three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord (BWV 1027–1029) to his Leipzig years (1735–1740) rather than his Cöthen period. Originally written for the fretted, six- or seven-string viola da gamba—now largely superseded by the cello, or the viola—these works showcase distinct structures.

Bach’s Sonata in G minor, BWV 1029, stands apart as the only one of his three viola da gamba sonatas structured in three movements rather than four, indicating they were not conceived as a unified set. It is structured as a solo concerto hybrid rather than a traditional church sonata (“Sonata da Chiesa“).

Listen to short excerpts below (recording with harpsichord and viola by Antoine Tamestit and Masato Suzuki, published by Harmonia Mundi)

The opening Vivace fully explores the dynamic relationship between the viola and harpsichord before concluding on the tonic.

The middle Adagio movement acts as an expressive, singing instrumental aria that demands elaborate ornamentation to amplify its emotional depth.

Finally, the driving Allegro finale unfolds as an energetic three-voice fugue with a prominent repeated-note theme, creating a powerful sense of momentum through its overlapping counterpoint.