Back-to-Back Bach Bassi

Bassi? Yes, two basso continuos from the Italian Baroque period. It's not the Italian word for double bass, but rather the Baroque practice of improvising higher parts from a basic bass line, even on a harpsichord. Sort of a 17th-century jazz lead sheet.

Back-to-back? Yes, Bach wrote only two violin concertos and they were likely composed at the same time (~1720) so they have back-to-back BWV numbers. And they both rely heavily on basso continuos in the slow movements. Listen to the deep bass openings on these 8K youtubes: BWV1041 and BWV1042 courtesy of Voices of Music, a non-profit early-music group in San Francisco.

This month's sightreading handout* compresses those low bass parts and later high violin parts into the same octaves for sightreading on guitar in first position. Surprisingly that works as a melody, but that's not at all the same experience as the full-bandwidth originals. They would be much better if arranged for a guitar-bass duo, or maybe a mandolin-guitar-bass trio. Links to the original scores on IMSLP are provided in case you want to give that a try.

For now, imagine those bassi and violini as you sightread these back-to-back Bach exercises.

* https://jjolson.net/BGS/Aug2026.pdf

Monthly Fretboard Exercises
August 2026
CC-BY: J. J. Olson