partita

Partita (also partie, partia, parthia, or parthie) was originally the name for a single-instrumental piece of music (16th and 17th centuries), but Johann Kuhnau (Thomaskantor until 1722), his student Christoph Graupner, and Johann Sebastian Bach used it for collections of musical pieces, as a synonym for suite.

A partita is a suite of dances, usually written for a solo instrument. 'Partita' is one of those terms that history has knocked about a bit. The root word is apparently the Italian 'parte', meaning a 'part' or 'section'.

The Partitas follow the basic form of the Baroque dance suite. An elaborate opening movement is followed by four stylized dances: the Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue, with one or more extra dances interpolated before the Gigue.

Bach The Six Partitas (BWV 825�830) were the first of a series of works for keyboard instruments that Bach published under the general title of Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Practice). With them Bach effectively engraved his name in the long and proud tradition of German composers.

The sonatas each consist of four movements, in the typical slow-fast-slow-fast structure. The partitas, however, are more unorthodox. They make use of the usual baroque dance mixture of Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue, but Bach added new elements to provide variety.

I believe that Bach was the only composer who used the term partita instead of suite. We can speculate that the French suites are more in the ornamental and stylized french style, derived from Couperin, while the partitas are more in the Italian style, more operatic, more similar to Vivaldi and Corelli.

Between partita and suite the only difference is that the word partita is used for solo instruments exclusively. Bach used it for violin and for harpsichord. Those for violin were originally called Partias, but they later changed that German word to the more common Italian one.

The sonatas each consist of four movements, in the typical slow-fast-slow-fast structure. The partitas, however, are more unorthodox. They make use of the usual baroque dance mixture of Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue, but Bach added new elements to provide variety.

D Minor Partita Violin Sonatas and Partitas The most famous of them is the 'D Minor Partita', with its fiendish and epic final 'Chaconne', in which a simple theme is varied no fewer than 64 times, to extraordinary emotional effect.

The six English Suites, six French Suites, and six partitas range from 6 to 10 movements each and contain nine different dance types (allemande, bourrée, courante, gavotte, gigue, minuet, passapied, polonaise, and sarabande), six different titles for introductory movements (fantasia, overture, preambulum, prelude, ...

Hardest movements of Bach's sonatas and partitas

• in G minor, BWV 1001 – Fugue. Sonata No.
• in A minor, BWV 1003 – Fugue. Sonata No.
• in C major, BWV 1005 – Fugue.

Professor Helga Thoene suggests that this partita, and especially its last movement, was a tombeau written in memory of Bach's first wife, Maria Barbara Bach (who died in 1720), though this theory is controversial. Yehudi Menuhin called the Chaconne "the greatest structure for solo violin that exists".