The musician's numerous compositions for violin, gamba and flute, with and without accompaniment, belong in the domain of Italian chamber music, and take either the concerto or the sonata form, as established by the Italians in 1700--forms everywhere available, although different in many respects from those at present employed for the same class of works. Bach's own violin playing must have been exceptionally artistic, even though he may not have conquered the greatest difficulties of his compositions as triumphantly as Joseph Joachim is able to do in our day. The German violinists of the seventeenth century had a fondness for double and more-stopping violin-playing, and surpassed the Italians in this respect. Bach's three sonatas for violin without accompaniment probably mark the utmost limit of development attainable by this kind of technique. It cannot be proved with certainty that any one before him ever attempted the composition of sonatas without accompaniment and in these works a certain admixture of clavier music is perceptible, especially in the fugue movements. The sonatas were arranged, either in parts or as a whole, for the clavier or the organ, and appear to almost better advantage in this way than in their original form. The preference for clavier-music is a trait by which Bach, as a German, is distinguished from the Italians. The latter contented themselves even in violin sonatas with a simple form of thorough-bass, that is, in connection with the violin part only one bass was written down for the clavier player, who improvised with the right hand supplementary chords. Bach composed very few works of this class and seldom left the accompaniment to be extemporized, but preferred to write out in full an independent part for the right hand. Of this description are the famous six sonatas for violin and clavier, the three sonatas for gamba and for flute with clavier. Among the latter the F-minor sonata takes rank as the most beautiful piece of chamber music ever composed for the flute. Three of Bach's violin concertos have been preserved, written in A minor, E major and D minor respectively. In the latter, two violins are concerted with the orchestra. It was not uncommon at that time to employ more than one instrument in a concerto, and to such a composition the name _concerto grosso_ was given. In 1721 Bach dedicated to the margrave Christian of Brandenburg, six concertos for a full body of instruments; of these numbers 2, 4 and 5 are concerti grossi. In the combining of solo instruments Bach is much bolder than his contemporaries and sometimes ventures upon the extraordinary. Thus in the second of this group of concertos he opposes to the orchestra a trumpet, a flute, an oboe and a violin, in the fifth a flute, a violin and a clavier. On the other hand, there are concertos by him in which the external contrast between solo and tutti has entirely vanished and nothing remains but the pure musical form arising from this contrast.