Márta Ábrahám’s new Chaconne Handbook covers decades of research work, and offers a guide to J. S. Bach’s most popular violin piece, the Chaconne.
The fascinating discovery of a unique time code embedded in the musical structure of the Chaconne is a breakthrough in Hungary’s Bach research.
Márta Ábrahám is a concert violinist, professor at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, Bach analyst, and orchestra founder, she is one of the most versatile and innovative musicians in the Hungarian classical music scene. The focus of her artistic activity is the thorough analysis and discovery of J. S. Bach’s works for solo violin and the publication of musicologically and scientifically rigorous analyses. Her mission is to facilitate the learning and performance of J.S. Bach’s music with the new, visual music teaching method she has developed. In the spirit of this, she gives concerts, teaches, and gives educational lectures all over the world, during which she tries to bring the richness of Bach’s musical language as close as possible to her students and the audience.
She and her co-author, Barnabás Dukay, have been present in the Hungarian and international music book market since 2017. Several attention-grabbing analyses, books, and sheet music series have been published in Hungarian and English, shedding light on the hidden messages and secrets of J.S. Bach’s violin works. The multimedia publication „Excerpts from Eternity” published in 2017 was followed in 2021 by two volumes of Tricentenary Special Complete Edition of Three Fugues for Solo Violin by J. S. Bach released by BioBach-Music Publisher.
The publications were made with the Colorful BACH notational technique developed for music pedagogic purposes. Márta Ábrahám’s new innovative method significantly facilitates the interpretation, learning, and performance of the works of J.S. Bach. The essence of the method is to differentiate between the voices and musical materials with colored notes, for example, themes are always highlighted in red. All the components of the polyphonic musical structure appear on the sheet music, clearly delineating the internal structure of the works. The visual information presented in this way also carries the structural analysis of the work. The „baroquely” dense sheet music usual for Bach becomes transparent, the colors help the musician orientate themself in the score like a map.
Márta Ábrahám’s new Chaconne handbook is her first independent volume, a work of music history significance. The gap-filling publication opens a new chapter in the interpretation, study, and performance of the Chaconne and 21st-century Bach research.
Recommended by Dr. Kamp Salamon, Kossuth Prize-winning conductor and president of the Hungarian Bach Society: „Márta Ábrahám’s Chaconne Handbook is essential for all those who love the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, strive to understand the meaning of the Chaconne, and who have recognized the light emanating from the masterpiece, which leads everyone towards the central order.”
The two-volume publication offers a theoretical and practical guide to the in-depth study of the Chaconne in the form of an easy-to-use, clear, and transparent manual and sheet music. The first volume discusses the history of edition of the piece, analyzes the structure and proportions, and sheds light on the deeper interpretation possibilities of the musical contexts – related to Bach’s personal life events. The second volume of the manual is a sheet music with a special appearance made using the Colorful BACH technique.
For today’s young generation of violinists, getting to know the organic structure of the piece and the symbolic meaning of the structure can be a compact breakthrough and a paradigm shift. Márta Ábrahám’s Chaconne handbook is an indispensable tool for educated music lovers, teachers, and students of strings, keyboards, musicology, and composition, as well as performers.
Find out more here.
