On 10/19/2011 12:38 PM, Rob MacKillop wrote:
Good question, Dennis. Interestingly, as Bach was running out of space,
the last 19 bars of the Allegro movement are written in a more concise
organ tablature. That would be an odd thing to hand to a lute player to
play from!
Hopkinson Smith published (Ut Orpheus Edizioni) an edition in D Major,
but states in his preface that, were he to do it again he would play it
in the more 'pastoral' key of Eb. It's not often an editor rubbishes
his own edition in the Preface! Most players play it in D.
I still have an edition for classical guitar in Eb. Although I seldomly
play on guitar nowadays, I remember that the prelude and allegro were
very playable and I never understood why they were transposed into D in
other editions. Perhaps because the fugue is a horrible difficult
piece... I never mastered that one, but also no impossible chords in Eb.
Never tried these pieces on baroque lute (there is still so much
Weiss....), but I wonder if transposing is really necessary. All "lute"
music by Bach needs changes because he never played on the instrument.
BWV995 is also transposed from g to a but this has more to do with the
baroque lute string range which will fit better in a when using a 13
course.
Not sure
about Jacob Lindberg, but I do know that he used different tunings,
even for the first six courses, based on tunings found at the time of
Reusner.
My own position is that Bach wrote all his 'lute' music for his lauten
clavier - but had lute players, possibly Weiss and other famous
players, in mind, thinning the texture as compared to his solo keyboard
pieces. But there again, the thinning out of the texture may have had
something to do with the muddy sound of his largely gut-string
keyboard.
Rob MacKillop
--
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
--
