DDD - 61:57 – Basel City Studios, Switzerland, 23-26 January 2008

I have long been fascinated by the challenges of playing the music of J.S. Bach on the lute.

Not only is the music uniquely complex, but to quote one of the world’s pre-eminent performers on that instrument: “…as they appear in the scores, Bach’s ‘lute works’ are unplayable on the standard 13-course lute used in 18^th century Germany”. This statement  well reflects my earlier experiences of playing these works on the baroque lute, which involved transposition and much adaptation. It appears that Bach actually composed this music for the Lautenwerk, a keyboard instrument with single gut strings. Jakob Adlung wrote in 1768: “it is the most beautiful of all keyboard instruments after the organ...and is so named because it imitates the sound of the lute in its range as well as delicacy...its only deficiency, is that on the lute one can play loudly and softly…”. At the same time, however, there was another type of lute in Germany which was used mostly for figured bass accompaniment, namely the liuto attiorbato or archiliuto (hereafter: the Italian lute). In Italy this instrument was used for solo repertoire as well as accompaniment. Considering the influence that Italian music and musicians had in early 18^th century Germany, it seems likely that German lutenists too would have used this instrument for solo music. I find that Bach’s music fits quite well to the Italian lute, and the lute compositions on the present recording are performed in the original keys with very little adaptation. Furthermore, I find that using single strings on this instrument (instead of the usual double stringing of the Baroque lute) combines the inherent clarity of the Lautenwerk with the intimacy and subtle dynamic possibilities of the lute.

Long before I became aware of Bach and the lute, I played folk and jazz music on the guitar. My influences were singers as well as instrumentalists such as Lester Young, who ‘spoke’ through the instrument. Billie Holiday said “when Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.” With folk and jazz it felt natural to emulate the inflections, such as subtle inequality of the weight and length of each note, and flexible articulation of the vocalists. I later studied classical guitar, and although it benefited me in many ways, much of what had come naturally as a folk and jazz guitarist was trained out of me, replaced by the 20^th century approach to playing romantic music. Subsequently turning to the lute and earlier time periods, I was pleased to discover that Baroque composers and performers were primarily concerned with the rhetorical content of the music, with the goal of moving passions in the listener. Musical performance was consistently compared with oratory, and each piece of music was designed to effect a change of emotional balance within the listener. Johann Mattheson wrote in 1739, “Since instrumental music is none other than a tone-language or sound-oration, its purpose must always be to move a particular passion,” and that “whatever occurs without these worthy affects means nothing, does nothing.” Although the concepts of rhetoric in the Baroque period are quite complex and philosophical, it again basically comes down to speaking through the music à la Lester Young. A major difference between the performance of Baroque music and that of folk and jazz, of course, is that we grow up surrounded by the music of our own time and culture. The study of historical performance practice helps us to interpret ‘foreign’ music in a manner that is both stylistically informed and personally expressive, which I have found in many ways to be similar to learning another language.

The language of Bach’s dance suites is strongly influenced by French and Italian music. The preludes which introduce the suites are often harmonic explorations imbued with the spirit of improvisation, the different chords and sequences creating subtle colors within a unified effect. The Prelude in BWV 995, for example, is characterized by a series of chords connected by improvisational runs. These running passages carry us into the mood of the harmonic goal, be it a painful dissonance, an uplifting modulation, or a peaceful consonance. The Prelude in BWV 1007, on the other hand, starts with a series of arpeggiated chords, another typical feature of preludes of that time.

The dances in turn used movement to express moods and feelings. Each dance was connected with a different affect, and it is important to distinguish between the Italian and French influenced dances, for dances from those two countries can be rhetorically quite different. A leading source of information on the rhetorical content of French influenced dances is “Der vollkommene Capellmeister” (1739) by Johann Mattheson. The French style courante (BWV 995), for example, is called by Mattheson “lovely and tender; …the passion it moves is sweet hopefulness...there is something heartfelt, yearning, and also something joyful”, whereas the Italian style corrente (BWV 1007), with its continuous motion and simple, unchanging measure, is quicker and its affect less serious.

A typical lute performance of the 17^th or 18^th centuries would have taken place in a small to medium sized room with wooden floors and ceilings. This would have created an intimacy which is difficult to emulate in the churches where many lute recordings are now made (including some of my own). Stone surfaces amplify and beautify the resonance, but can also make the instrument seem distant and cover up much of the finger noise, which is an integral part of the lute sound. By making this recording in the intimate setting of a small wooden room, I have attempted to create a sound and atmosphere similar to that of the Baroque period.

This recording closes with my arrangement of “Bist du bei mir”, one of the most beautiful and popular songs of the Baroque era. It appears in the Clavier-Büchlein für Anna Magdalena Bach, which J.S. Bach compiled for his second wife. Modern research has shown that this song was most likely composed by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1690 – 1749). Nevertheless, it has been associated with J.S. Bach for centuries and is a fitting close to a recording of some of the most challenging and expressive music ever written for the lute.                            Peter Croton, Basel 2008