At 01:09 PM 11/25/2008, Silvius Leopold wrote: > Toccata & fugue on Archlute !? > Is that for real,or some kind of studio overdubbing? > Gerd > --
I don't think it's so hard to believe. It's even harder to be convincing in performing that piece with fewer strings. Philip Hii made a convincing transcription (in spite of his somewhat abrasive tone and jarring phrasing) for modern 6-string guitar. Andrew Manze also made a transcription for unaccompanied violin. Both the toccata and coda material in Manze's transcription are very effective, very enjoyable, and cleverly transcribed in using rapid arpeggios and double stops to outline the large chords in the original. Unfortunately, I found the whole stretch of the fugue between to be dry and monotonous. Ironically, where double stops would be most useful in sketching polyphony is the very place where double stops are wholly absent. As Manze clearly states in his liner notes, the texture in his transcription of the body of the fugue is very strictly monophonic: "...the Fugue indulges in the conceit of sounding polyphonic, literally 'many voiced,' without once employing any double stopping. Instead, the impression of polyphony is given by a careful handling of voice leading and tessitura, rather than a bewildering succession of unidiomatically virtuosic, cat's-cradle chords." As hard as I tried, I could not find much feeling of implied polyphony in the body of the fugue. In spite of occasional modulation, it comes off as a tediously endless repetition of the pedal-point-rich fugue theme. The most cursory listen to the fugues Bach did write for unaccompanied violin (of course, from BWV 1001, 1003, and 1005) reveals that this strictly monophonic approach to implied polyphony was not Bach's typical approach to fugal writing for violin. Non-lute rant over. Carry on. Eugene To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
