ABSTRACT
Bach's solo works offer violinists a broad canvas on which to determine tempos. The absence of any original metronomic markings and the ambiguity that surrounds many of the dance movements and their tempo markings fosters a myriad of interpretations. Heifetz himself felt it useful to add durations throughout his Marteau edition of the solo Bach and in many other scores and programmes. In a statistical analysis of tempi in the Partita in D minor, Richard Pulley addresses the significance of studying the duration of performances as opposed to the actual tempo. Durations and metronome markings are often employed in the analysis of multiple recordings of the same piece. The handwritten durations in minutes and seconds found at the start of every movement in Heifetz's Marteau edition of the solo Bach provides an empirical base from which to examine his recordings. A correlation like that found in the Prelude recordings might be passed over as simply a coincidence.
