Pieces:

(work into the text)

prelude in e major from wtc book 1 (3 min)

allemande and courante from bwv 995 (15min)

minuet 1 and 2 from bwv 1007 (4)

Beschrnkt, ihr Weisen dieser Welt (bachliederundarienvoiceandcontinuo.pdf) (2 min)

improvisations (5 min)

passion chorale wenn ich ein mal sol scheiden (2 min)

Lecture:

One cannot question that it is a great honor to have an opportunity to lecture on and
perform the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, a composer so widely revered and regarded
as, probably, the most influential composer in the history of Western music. The modifier
classical does not truly apply in the present context because the musical legacy of J.S.
Bach has shattered barriers of genre and function. From the Beatles and Procul Harum to
The Toys, Apollo 100, Charle Mingus, and into modernity with myriad and multi-
flavored Bach projects, notably Red Hot + Bach and Avi Avital, Bach has made one of
the most profound, albeit delayed, artistic impacts in human history.

I thank you for sharing this hour and a half to explore with me, Lars Rosager, what it
means to say that Bach was an inter-instrumental composer. As far as I have been able to
discern, nobody has employed the word inter-instrumental or inter-instrumentality in the
world of music, but that is not to say the concept is new. The idea of inter-instrumentality
is simply an arena within which one may study how music for a specific instrument,
including voice, has been or potentially could be transferred to instruments for which the
music was not originally fitted. This lecture will concentrate on two types of inter-
instrumentality: one practice specific to the time in which Bach lived and worked, and
another side of the concept that applies to reviving the music of Bach through alternative
media, including the potential for reinterpreting the music using instrument technology
not available to baroque musicians.

Bach, a composer of many talents, was primarily an organist. That the organ should be
Bachs primary instrument foretells a musical career in which the intermingling of
diverse timbres plays a significant role. Many of you are likely aware that the
instrumental sacred musical tradition in Western Europe takes for its centerpiece an
instrument capable of simulating colorfully rich orchestral sounds. W.L. Sumner, in his
article The Baroque Organ published in The Proceedings of the Royal Musical
Association, outlines some basic characteristics of organ registration. To clarify, the term
registration refers to the configuration of the pipes of an organ in order to shade the music
with various sounds. The organ imitates male and female choruses, reeds, flutes, cornets,
and trumpets. This King of All Instruments wields various other possible timbres and,
taking into consideration the myriad combinations of its sounds, it is a veritable engine
room of sonic innovation. One does well to note that, as far as traditional organ
registration in the baroque was concerned, Bach broke all the rules. (Sumner)
Unfortunately, we are left wondering exactly what these registrations were, but we may
be grateful to know that Bach kept his ears open and allowed for new colors to enter the
generally accepted palette of sound.

The keyboard was the primary tool for Bach, and his preludes and fugues from the
seminal Well-Tempered Clavier speak to wide variety within just the keyboard family of
instruments. The Well-Tempered Clavier caters to a range of keyboard instruments,
sometimes providing musical clues toward discovering the exact instrument for which a
piece was intended.

The prelude in e major from the first of the two books of the well-tempered clavier,
published in 1722, points to organ roots with the long tonic pedal points that initiate the
main thematic material well as the upper tonic pedal that closes the piece. These notes,
which establish the tonal center in which the immediately following material is
composed, would not lose volume on the organ regardless of how long they were held. In
this particular work, the pedals are to be held for quite a long time, especially when one
takes into account the pastoral qualities of the composition that would imply a relaxed
tempo to convey the peace of the countryside. On a harpsichord, clavichord, virginal, or
spinet, examples of keyboard instruments common during the time of Bach, these pedal
points would gradually lose power, a phenomenon known in music as decay. Wanda
Landowska foregrounds the bass pedals by dropping them an octave, a treatment that
may be likened to the way an organist might interpret the work. As a brief aside, I would
like to suggest everyone listen to Landowskas recordings of the Well-Tempered Clavier.
It is truly a remarkable experience.

I have arranged the prelude in e major from the well-tempered clavier book 1 for seven-
string guitar. There are some slight variations to the original texture, but one may be
surprised that the piece works as well as it does for the seven-string guitar. Notice that the
length of the pedal points can be maximized through the use of open strings, but do not
sustain in the same way an organ would. The clearest instance of this decay is in the
upper pedal at the final cadence of the piece. The bass pedals that initiate the thematic
material are cut short by the inner voice. This is a good example of how the guitar, or
even cello and violin, often need to make one voice do the work of two. While on the
keyboard, especially the organ, two voices at a narrow interval are easily distinguished,
the physics of the guitar require a less expansive polyphonic texture.

(play the prelude in e major) 15 min

The bowed string music of the Italian school, particularly Antonio Vivaldi, was an
important influence on Bach. Bach had experience playing the violin, so it is no giant
surprise he would compose beautifully for the cello. During a period in which Bach
composed much instrumental music, 1720 saw the completion of several sets of dances
for unaccompanied cello. Anna Wittstruck summarizes some characteristics of these
pieces in her article Dancing with J.S. Bach and a Cello: Not only was Bach the
first non-cellist composer to give the cello its first big break as a lead
actor and soloist; his monophonic compositions are masterfully
contrapuntal. Thus Bachs imposed compositional constraints
writing implied harmony for a solo voice and his idiomatic
technical demands and empowerment of the instrument prompt us
still to marvel over a single mans creation, and view this music as
sustaining, canonical, and transcendent.

With the cello suites, Bach changed the role of the cello, allowing it to imitate the
thoroughly multi-voiced compositional techniques of keyboard and choral music.
Lutenist Clive Titmuss notes that Bach arranged the fifth cello suite for lute around 1730.
However, Titmuss argues that the arrangement is better suited to the keyboard. It is well
known that Bach enjoyed playing on a lute harpsichord, a reputedly beautiful keyboard
instrument that imitated the sound of the lutes plucked strings. One begins to notice the
rich environment of instrumental cross-fertilization Bach enjoyed as a composer.

In recent times, there is a mistaken understanding that the so-called lute suites of Bach
were originally intended for the lute. The historical evidence actually points to a much
broader collection of instrumental sources. The modern six-string guitar as such did not
exist in Bachs lifetime, but the fact that six-string guitar arrangements must make
concessions to the original score recalls the origins of the lute pieces perhaps more
accurately than many guitarists realize. Adapting the suites to the seven-string guitar is
one way to approximate a historical practice of inter-instrumental arranging while also
approximating the sound of the baroque lutes extended bass range.

I will now play my arrangement of the allemande and courante from Bachs fifth cello
suite BWV 1011. 995 is the BWV number for the lute arrangement, whose lute-specific
qualities are questionable. For those who may be unfamiliar with BWV numbers, it is
simply a numbering system used to keep track of Bachs many musical works.

The slow, stately allemande is the first official movement of the baroque dance suite. A
prelude may introduce the allemande, as is the case with the suite from which I have
taken the two dances I will perform now. It may be of interest to note that the prelude is
composed in the style of a French overture, a formal outline that came to be definitive of
the high baroque. The allemande exhibits aspects of French overture form as well,
especially when one considers the quicker courante, in triple meter, that follows.
The French overture originated with orchestral music for the ballet stage. One must bear
in mind that the baroque orchestra was typically much smaller than what one will find at
Davies Symphony Hall today. Violins were primary, supported by lower bowed strings,
recorders, flutes, oboes, bassoons, horns, drums, and a continuo section. The smaller size
of the baroque orchestra and the comparatively less-complicated music composed for it
makes arranging baroque orchestral music for a solo instrument far simpler than
arranging contemporary orchestral pieces for a single musician. Solo keyboard and lute
suites began to adopt the orchestral French overture style, and, clearly, one finds a very
good example of inter-instrumentality. Bach wrote many movements in French overture
style, as well as employing Italian sinfonia style. But thats another discussion altogether!

Play allemande and courante from bwv 995

I will be staying on the topic of the cello suites for a moment. In fact, the next bit of
music I will play is the well-known pair of minuets from the cello suite in g major bwv
1007.

Some people speak of the monophonic, or purely melodic quality of these minuets, but,
looking closer, one finds a clear chordal outline.

[demonstrate first three tonal centers in an unarpeggiated fashion (I, IV6, I, V; V43/V,
V)]

I have played the chords on which the first period is based, but of course it is important to
examine the way these harmonies sound within the context of the music itself. They are
played in ascending arpeggios, sounded one note at a time from lowest to highest. Such a
sonic effect is much easier to achieve on a plucked string instrument than with the bow of
a cello.

The stile bris was central to the development of baroque harpsichord style, particularly
the French composers Couperin and DAnglebert. An approach that originated with the
lute, the stile bris relies on the irregular breaking up of chords as a means of expression
that would not be present in block harmonies. It is notable that Bach was actually not
innovating all that much in writing broken chords for the cello. It may be more
appropriate to cite a lute style being adapted to the keyboard and subsequently to the
cello.

The cello suite in g major, bwv 1007 has been played on guitar before. I am not the first
to conceive of transferring the cello music to guitar. There have even been arrangements
for various types of seven-string guitar. Nonetheless, there is still room to make this
music grow. The ability to renew the music of Bach on ones own instrument and infuse
it with a new flavor, approach it from an angle that has not yet been considered: this is, at
least in part, the magic of the body of music left to us by Bach.

[explain my own arrangement, three different string types, fretless portion, etc., likeness
to organ.]
play minutes (47 min thus far)

To question the musical literacy of Bach would be silly, but it would be equally silly to
forget that his music welcomes popular elements of unwritten provenance; folk song and
dance, Lutheran chorales, lute song. Sir John Eliot Gardiner identifies a certain
approachability in Bachs music, its appeal to common tastes. In the article Can Any
Composer Equal Bach? Clemency Burton-Hill cites Gardiner Consider,
for
example, the peasant stomp of the B Minor Mass, as
opposed to Handels wispy angels which disappear
into the ether. This earthy element to Bachs epic
spirituality is a wonderful paradox. There is so much
wit. Its real.
Bach composed the songs and arias from the Anna Magdalena notebook between 1725
and 1736. They are set for voice and continuo. Such an instrumentation not only reminds
us that the Lutheran chorale is suitable for solo performance by a self-accompanied
vocalist, but also opens the door to numerous instrumental and vocal timbres. After all,
continuo sections consisted of mutable combinations of instruments. In Spain, for
example, one common instrumentation was comprised of viola da gamba, harp, and
guitar. From region to region in Western Europe, one would have encountered different
colorations within the continuo section of an orchestra, small ensemble, or
accompaniment band for a vocalist.

Performing spiritual music in a solo setting relates to the Lutheran religious concepts so
dear to Bachs heart. During the reformation, private readings and personal
interpretations of sacred texts were beginning to gain footholds within a religious climate
traditionally based on generalized doctrine. One may wish to delve into Bachs
philosophical reasons behind arranging religious music for solo performance.

Learned organists and harpsichordists were expected to know how to read from figured
bass. This quasi-improvisational system is built on a bass line over which the continuo
player would be expected to realize specific musical intervals designated in the score. As
a teacher, Bach produced didactic materials related to proper continuo playing.

In reality, any instrument capable of playing chords is capable of providing a continuo

accompaniment. Lutes, archlutes, theorbos, guitars, harpsichords, virginals, spinets,
clavichords, organs the list goes on. Bassoons and viols, though they are less
associated with chordal music, are sometimes featured in continuo sections to provide a
fuller texture.

Play beschrnkt . . .
No discussion on bach would be complete without mentioning his high level of skill as an
improviser. It is amazing, at least to my mind, to think that someone could improvise a
four-voice fugue at the keyboard, all the while keeping to both theoretical rigor and
idiomatic compositional technique. Bach was just such a musician. In his early days as a
professional organist, his playing sounded outlandish to the more conservative ear. He
was known to embellish the chorales rather wildly, a practice that would have likely
confused the congregation participating in devotional music at church services.

Now, it must be clear that improvisation was a central component to the art of music for a
long time prior to the years during which Bach graced the world with his presence. In
fact, it is quite a shame that the practice of improvisation has waned in recent years
within classical musical culture. As part of a more integrated approach to music,
improvisation and personal creative license, in my view, must make their way back into
institutions that claim to be such pristine lineage holders of the Western canon. Any
historical perspective will show that, far from a world of stagnancy, the development of
what we recognize to be classical music today displays a great deal of risk-taking
innovation, theoretical and practical debate, and shedding of outdated precepts.

The next piece I will be playing is an improvisation on Bachs famous passacaglia in c

minor. The passacaglia as a genre originates around the middle of the sixteenth century in
the strummed guitar music of Spain. Early on, it differed little from the chaconne, both
forms being defined by a continuous cycle of a specific set of chords. A bit later, with the
organist Frescobaldi, a musician who exhibited an important influence on Bach, the
passacaglia begins to transform.

Pertinent to my discussion would be the fact that, as early as 1627, the passacaglia had
been adopted from guitar to keyboard music. Alexander Silbiger writes in Oxfords
Grove Encyclopedia of Music, Distinct German forms of the passacaglia
developed only in the later years of the 17th century, most strikingly in solo organ
music. The German organists, drawing on traditions of cantus-firmus
improvisation and ground-bass divisions, created a series of majestic ostinato
compositions, shaped by increasingly brilliant figurations.

As one would presume, Bachs famous passacaglia belongs to this later German
organ tradition. The work is a development on a ground bass, a steadily
repeating bassline over which musical material develops and grows upon itself.
The idea of embellishment upon an established bass line is directly related to a
notion of inter-instrumentality in a historical sense. For example, The church
sonatas of seventeenth-century Roman composer Lelio Colista show a
connection in their improvised cadenzas for each of the ensembles instruments.

[explain concept of bass line providing the footing for melody instruments
musings, use instrument/voice]

In a modern context, one may think of the way jazz musicians improvise. In a
conventional sense, jazz is a direct outgrowth of the passacaglia. Repeating the
same set of harmonies freely, the members of the ensemble take turns
demonstrating the stylings of their instruments. Again, the instruments associated
with the passacaglia must be considered in the plural: guitar, lute, harpsichord,
clavichord, organ, piano, double bass, saxophone, and many many others.

Available today are arrangements of Bachs famous organ passacaglia for solo
piano, for piano duet, for four guitars, for eight trombones, for various other small
ensembles, and of course for orchestra. Leopold Stokowskis orchestral
interpretation of the Bach work makes use of a larger, more modern orchestra.
One will remember my previous brief discussion of the diminutive baroque
orchestra. Needless to say, the longstanding practice of instrumental cross-
fertilization is alive and well.

Play improvisation over passacaglia

To close my lecture-concert on the inter-instrumental aspects of the music of Johann

Sebastian Bach, I will explain my arrangement of the chorale Wenn ich einmal soll
scheiden (Be near me, Lord, when dying).

http://www.thisisclassicalguitar.com/bachs-lute-suites-clive-titmuss/

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140917-can-any-composer-equal-bach