Bach BWV 998 Allegro played on the German baroque lute by Chris Hirst

#lute #baroquelute #bach #bachlute
Bach's Prelude, Fugue and Allegro BWV 998 is a masterpiece and certainly one of, it not the best piece of music that has been associated with the baroque lute. It seems most likely that the piece was not composed for the lute, but for the lautenwerk or lute-harpsichord, a keyboard instrument with gut strings meant to imitate the sound of the lute but without all of the technical issues of the actual lute. Bach owned two of these and much or even all of his solo music associated with the lute may have been actually intended for the lautenwerk. In the case of BWV 998, the most obvious clue to this is that the final part of Bach's original manuscript was written in German keyboard tablature. Comparing this allegro with similar fast movements by the great 18th century lutenist and almost exact contemporary of Bach, Silvius Leopold Weiss, Bach is much busier in the bassline and changes register and key more often. These features are easy to execute on a keyboard but much more difficult on the baroque lute - the piece is actually impossible to play exactly as written. Another clue is the key - Eb major is a very awkward key on an instrument essentially tuned in D as it limits the use of open strings which is a key characteristic of 18th century lute music. It has been suggested that the title "Prelude pour la luth o cembal" (Prelude for the lute or harpsichord) may not have been written by Bach himself.

By 1735 when BWV 998 was composed, the lute used in Germany as played by Weiss had 13 courses (sets of strings) and was tuned to a chord of D minor. This is the type of lute played in this video. The bottom 7 courses are tuned in a scale and are played entirely by the right hand thumb - the lowest 5 cannot be fretted with the left hand so have to be tuned to the key of the piece being played. The bassline is usually played almost entirely on these bass strings which has two implications - the instrument is much less agile in the bass than the upper parts, and the ability to change key is limited as you don't have the chromatic notes available.

Given the above issues, trying to adapt BWV 998 to the German baroque lute is very problematic. Due to the severe technical issues, this piece is not often played by lutenists and when it is, it is most often played on other types of lutes with different tunings. Although it is great to hear it played on a lute, for me the sound is anachronistic and doesn't sound like 18th century German lute music. I decided to try and approach BWV 998 with fresh eyes and try and adapt it to the correct instrument - the German 13 course lute - in a way that would be as faithful to the original as possible but also felt and sounded like lute music of the period. My template for this was Weiss, I wanted it to sound and feel more like Weiss's music which was written on this instrument.

The first thing was to put it in a more suitable key so F major was close but much more natural than Eb, given that this was written for a keyboard instrument anyway. In this key all of the upper parts (keyboard right hand) could be played as written. The problem comes with the bassline, which is much more agile than Weiss and involves more key changes. The basslines in Weiss are almost always on the lower bass strings so I did this whenever possible. The octave stringing of the bass strings means that the 'direction' of travel (whether you go up or down to the next note) is much less obvious than on a keyboard but I tried to keep the original movement mostly. Although technically difficult because of how busy this bassline is compared to Weiss, much of the piece was now playable. The real problem was in certain parts where it changes key, especially in the second half. This meant that certain parts weren't possible to play. I tried to think "what would Weiss do?" and used the technique of playing chromatic notes up an octave so that the bass can be kept mostly on the lower strings, this is very common in Weiss. There was only one passage where the key change meant doing this would create a very disjointed bassline, so the bass here had to be at the higher octave which made it very challenging to play, but it is possible and works in the context of the overall piece. With a lesser piece you would wonder if it was worth the effort, but with this piece it was worth persevering! Finally, Weiss is very legato and resonant and uses open strings and slurs where possible, so I followed this approach in my version of BWV 998.

Please have a look at the other videos on the Quatrapuntal channel, including many mandora (another type of lute) videos and several featuring the Portuguese guitar and other instruments. Please also help us to keep making content like this by subscribing.
   / @quatrapuntal  

Visit us on Facebook:
  / quatrapuntal  

All images are from Wikimedia Commons and marked for reuse.