Eugene Drucker, violinist, co-founder of the Emerson Quartet, Bach, Chaconne

“This music is my vocation, my life’s work. If it partly defines me as a person, I cannot think of a better single way to identify myself.”
– Eugene Drucker

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The following are Mr. Drucker's notes to his long-time recording producer, Da-Hong Seetoo, including which take(s) to use for each phrase (circa 1989).

Penciled numbers like T10 and T11 in Mr. Drucker’s copy of the Chaconne indicate the takes that he asked his recording producer, Da-Hong Seetoo, to use in editing his 1989 recording of this iconic work. The paragraph below indicates his decisions regarding arpeggiation and slur patterns in the climactic passages from measures 89-121 and from 201 through 207.

“In bar 89 I penciled in a slur for the first quarter, where Bach wrote out eight 32nd notes, and continued that pattern in 89 and 90 with the word “etc.” written afterward, to indicate that I arpeggiate like that through bar 104. In 105, I change to sextuplet 32nd notes, with syncopated slurs in a pattern of 3:6:6:6:6:6:3 for each bar (i.e. 36 sextuplet 32nd notes for the entire measure), with the final triplet of each bar slurred into the first triplet of the following bar. To achieve maximum volume for the climax at bar 113, I slur 3x3, three groups of twelve notes for each bar and then go back to the syncopated bowing of groups of six from the second quarter of bar 117 until the section ends at 121. It was difficult to indicate some of these patterns in the narrow space available, so I marked those bars schematically; the Arabic numerals might not always add up to the correct number of notes per measure (36), but the idea of how to slur the arpeggios should be clear enough to violinists from what I’ve written.

“The arpeggiated variation at 201, ending the D Major section, is simpler: six slurs of double-stopped 16th notes per bar.”