My Senior Project for my BA was a 30-page paper on this stuff. I won't get into that much depth now. 
SRD surely knew Bach's music for unaccompalied violin, because this is a perfect description of them. With one violin, showing an absolute understanding of its capabilities, Bach wrote music that cannot be believed, no matter how many times you hear it.Atiaran's voice enthralled him. No instruments aided her singing, but before she had finished her first line, he knew she did not need them. The clean thread of her melody was tapestried with unexpected resonances, implied harmonies, echoes of silent voices, so that on every rising motif she seemed about to expand into three or four singers, throats separate and unanimous in the song.
The key is these "implied harmonies" and "echoes of silent voices." The violin CAN'T play four different notes at once, much less four voices' worth of melody & harmonies. So Bach wrote in such a way that, even when one voice must drop out, for the sake of another voice, we "hear" what the silent voice would be playing.
The most extreme examples are in the three fugues that are in this collection. To understand what a feat this is, you should read my post in Foul's "The Art of Fugue" thread. After you've tried to wrap your brain around that, try to imagine such a thing being done on ONE VIOLIN!!!! Genius beyond anything I'll ever imagine.
One of the great - GREAT - movements of these pieces is the monstrous chaccone in D-minor. For something like 12-15 minutes, a harmonic pattern of several measures is repeated, over and over, while the way this pattern is manifested changes and changes and changes. And talk about implied harmonies!!, the whole thing ends on one note!! But what your mind hears.....
I hope the music (and the music-making) pleases you. And thanks indeed to Fist for bringing up this great work of Bach's.
