The Myth of Bach’s Lute Suites by Clive Titmuss. This is a guest post by Clive Titmuss A big thank you to Clive for this epic article previously published on Classical Guitar Canada. Make sure to visit his website to see more of his work and recordings (earlymusicstudio. All images provided by Clive Titmuss.
Click on the images to enlarge. Part IAs student guitarists, we learned that J. Bach wrote four suites and a number of miscellaneous pieces for the lute, now played on the guitar. Wikipedia reads: ” Bach composed a suite and several other works for solo lute.” You know what I am going to say next–perhaps you should sit down. Recent scholarship and the work of a number of makers and players of 1. Century- style keyboards have made it obvious that Bach wrote the music for, and probably at, the lute- harpsichord. The real story is everything that happened after his death that connects the works in question to the lute.
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Briefly, my argument runs like this: Over a period of years and in a mood to experiment, Bach writes thin- textured music for his own use on a gut- strung keyboard instrument or clavichord. With the arrival of an enlarged and improved instrument, he adapts favourite earlier material to it.
Most of his music remains in hand- copied versions (MSS) in his lifetime. The music is first indexed, edited and published by the Bach Gesellschaft in the 1. Century as keyboard music.
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A German musicologist presents a contrary opinion, claiming that Bach is a composer of lute music. Without anyone around who plays the lute well enough to refute the idea, it is gradually repeated and eventually accepted. Cultural nationalism and politics play a role. Hungry for international credibility in the concert hall and on recordings, during the 2. Century guitarists transcribe and adopt the music as part of their native repertoire.
A more accurate picture of historic performance practices and renewed scholarship about the details of his work re- evaluates Bach’s legacy, but the myth of Bach lute suites, especially among guitarists, lives on largely unchallenged. Known, with minor variations, as “The Lute Suites of Bach” for at least 1. They are not technically possible on the lute without fundamental changes to the text.
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Two of the suites, in E major and G minor, are two- clef arrangements of earlier pieces for strings with only passing resemblance to the lute style. External and internal evidence presents too many contradictions to ignore. My subject is this: How did this misconception get started, perpetuated, and why does it persist in the face of so much contrary evidence? Komm susses Kreuz. Bach wrote effectively for the lute as a colour instrument in several choral works. A bass aria with lute, violas d’amore and continuo is the crucial moment in the St.
John Passion when Jesus ascends to heaven. In an early version of the Saint Matthew Passion, the aria Komm s. In the Trauerode (BWV1. Christiane Eberhardine, Electress of Saxony, Bach wrote for two lutes. He capitalized on a historic archetype whenever he needed an evocation of the angelic, but his writing style in these cases—more like his cello writing–does not come even close to resembling what he is supposed to have written for the lute.
British lutenist and scholar Nigel North’s comments on his Linn Records Bach on the Lute set: “Instead of labouring over perpetuating the idea that the so- called lute pieces of Bach are proper lute pieces I prefer to take the works for unaccompanied Violin or Cello and make them into new works for lute, keeping (as much as possible) to the original text, musical intention, phrasing and articulation, yet transforming them in a way particular to the lute so that they are satisfying to play and to hear.”J. Hoffmann theorbo- lute, Leipzig 1. It is easy to forget that Bach did not enjoy the reputation that he has today, a process that took two hundred years.
Since Mendelssohn’s famous revival performance of the Matthew Passion early in the 1. Century, his music has become a monument of our civilization, like the works of Shakespeare or Beethoven.
It has been an extraordinary history in itself–as Percy Young observed (quoted in Eric Siblin’s excellent book on the Cello Suites): “The difference between the reputation that Bach enjoyed in his lifetime and that which accumulated posthumously is one of the remarkable phenomena in the history of music.”A Look at the Sources: (It will be of great assistance to the reader to become familiar with the Bach Werke Verzeichnis . There is evidence that he ran an instrument rental business. Alas, there is no mention of what happened to his enormous collection of scores, but we know that he divided the bulk of his library between Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Phillip Emmanuel. Many of his works were not autographs, but copies made by a number of his students. Wilhelm was a prodigy, but something of wastrel and a drunk, and bit by bit he sold his patrimony to pay his debts, hawking many manuscripts to collectors, while Carl carefully catalogued his father’s work.
On his death, more MSS hit the market. There are variant versions of some of the best- known pieces, including two copies of the Cello Suites, for example. The sources of Bach’s music are now widely dispersed among the libraries of the world. Copies were titled after, even long after, composition. The identification of the various copyists who were his pupils has become a cottage industry among musicologists.
BWV 9. 96 (Suite I in E minor), the earliest of the pieces according to modern watermark research and stylistic traits, was sub- titled by the copyist aufs Lauten werck. It has many similarities to the Toccatas for harpsichord, and dates from before 1.
In classic French suite form, it appears to be the composer’s earliest piece for lute- harpsichord. Of all the works under discussion, this is the piece least suited to the lute and the farthest from its style.
Modern lute and guitar arrangements simplify the dense keyboard style of the opening movement (Passagio- Prestissimo) and particularly the Gigue. BWV 9. 96 Praeludio con la Suite aufs Lauten werck opening page.
BWV 9. 96 E minor suite, last page, showing impossible passages. Similarly, BWV 9. Prelude, Fugue, Allegro in E flat) from the mid- 1.
Prelude pour la Lute . Looking at this autograph, even in facsimile, it is easy to see that the title was not written by Bach, and has been added later in a different hand. This piece has an interesting wrinkle: Running out of paper, Bach finished the last bars in keyboard tablature. This piece is Bach’s last and most sophisticated work for the lute- harpsichord. BWV 9. 97 (Suite II in C minor), exists in a number of copies. One is thought to be by C.
E Bach, another, by J. Agricola, but probably not titled by him (this title page dates from the early 1. Century), is designated “C moll/Praeludium, Fuge, Sarabande,/ und Gigue/ fur/ Clavier.” The score has the right hand in treble clef, one octave higher than is customary, perhaps to compensate for having to copy from an autograph that appeared to be too low for normal harpsichord music. It was suggested at one point that the piece was for violin or oboe and continuo. Many guitar transcriptions do the same.
This work may have been the trigger for the assumption that Bach wrote for lute, since three movements (Prelude, Sarabande and Gigue, without Double) were made into lute pieces in tablature in the 1. Even with the upper clef transposed down, the tessitura is too high for the lute. The busy bass- line and texture mark it as lute- harpsichord work. The “Little” Prelude in C minor, (BWV 9. Prelude pour la Lute is a copy by Johann Peter Kellner.
It is similar in date, style and texture to the first prelude of the Well- Tempered Clavier, 1. Bach is supposed to have written these works, now much played by students of the piano, as pedagogical exercises for his son Wilhelm Friedemann.
This piece is playable on the lute, but bears no resemblance to any lute preludes by Bach’s contemporaries. Kellner’s claim that the work is for the lute can’t be verified, and with its clear keyboard disposition, it seems unlikely. Only one suite bears an unequivocal designation: the autograph of BWV 9. Suite III in G minor, a transcription of BWV 1.
Cello Suite V): Suite pour la Luth par J. S. The problem with this version, the subject of the Wikipedia entry, is that it extends down to G’, a tone lower than the disposition of the lute common in Leipzig. Bach transposed and revised or converted it from its cello model around 1. Bach’s punctilious use of rests in the bass, the use of two- clef score, and typical right- hand chord filling is an indication of that he made the arrangement from the keyboard. The later lute intabulation (from the 1.
Bach MS in its use of the open bass diapasons of the lute and in its idiomatic ornamentation. The serious demeanour of the suite, originally written in the 1. French style, was outdated by the 1. A more galant flavour was fashionable in lute music, with simpler melodic and rhythmic ideas, and a disposition to recreation. The light music of Falckenhagen and Kropfganss, the rapidly changing moods of Weiss’ later Suonatas, and the cantabile pieces of Baron exemplify the ingratiating new lute style.
The tablature version of BWV 9. But at heart, it is a 1. Century suite in the mould of an earlier generation. The fact that he chose to arrange this piece is of great significance. From his point of view, it was a favourite example of his early work in antique style, and it represented a link to the style of the lutenists and keyboard music in suite form of the 1. Century, the style of Reusner and Froberger. In a similar move, Bach made a two- clef arrangement (BWV 1.
Violin Partita BWV 1. In making the transcription, he did not go quite as far as he did with BWV 9. The key is impossible on the lute, as the piece needs an open e string. Several writers have commented that this Bach transcription is not good keyboard music.