Sonatas and Partitas

»All that one need do to elevate the ‘arrangement' form to something of proven artistic value in the reader's estimation is to mention the name of Johann Sebastian Bach. In his role as an organist, he was one of the most productive arrangers of his own works and those of other composers. From him I learned the truth that good, great, and universal music remains the same no matter which instrument sounds the notes. But I also learned another truth, namely that each instrumental medium has a different idiom, its own language, with which it proclaims the same content in always new interpretations.«

The above quotation of the arranger, composer, and piano virtuoso Ferruccio Busoni formulates in romantic style and tone a justification for musical transcription which still holds true today. Even though the stylistic approach in the arrangements on this recording is entirely different from the one used by Busoni in his transcriptions of Bach, the following remarks take the substance of the quotation as their point of reference.

The guitar inherited a musical tradition of noble predecessors as old as the first, strict vihuela fantasies of the Renaissance period. Certain folkloristic excesses aside, it has always been an extremely effective yet restrained medium for expressing music of deep and serious content. The intimate sound of the lute family dictated limitations in the practical realm of performance, and the complicated playing technique required by these instruments with its intricate collection of rules and just as many exceptions to the rules meant that for many years the development of their potential was left to composers who were also virtuoso players. The result was that the music written for these stringed instruments often did not correspond to their capabilities. Transcriptions were undertaken in order to supply suitable pieces.

Attempts to use the guitar in interpretation of J. S. Bach's music have always centered on the great solo cycles of the three sonatas and three partitas for violin and the six suites for violoncello. As is well known, Bach himself arranged the fugue in the first sonata, the third partita, and the fifth cello suite for baroque lute. These transcriptions still belong to the standard repertoire for concert guitar, and arrangers have continued to follow Bach's example in their numerous transcriptions of his other works. The more polyphonically and chordally developed structure of the violin works is better suited to the possibilities of the guitar. The common range of the violin and the guitar and their similar playing techniques form the basis of all transcriptions. Since the two instruments have an almost identical range, the violin version can be transposed one octave lower for the guitar version. Both instruments accommodate only those combinations and sequences of notes which the four fingers of the playing hand can produce by pressing on the strings. Thus the characteristic formal and technical limitations of the violin works are transferred to the guitar with different specifications.

The following notes sketch the principles and methods employed in the transcriptions on the present recording.

The fundamental transcriptional problem is, that the structure and very different textures of a violin sonata range from the large scale of passages of chordal and polyphonic density to the single musical line in the development of other passages. In the former case the chordal positions typical of the violin create enormous problems of finger technique for the guitarist, and in the latter case the lack of sonority in the linear figures does not seem to present a sufficient challenge. Since Andrés Segovia's intentionally romantic interpretation and version of the Chaconne in D minor, more or less all arrangements of the violin works have involved substantial reworkings of the original texts, either through changes of chordal positions or the addition of bass parts. In this way the new versions reorder the precise structural proportions of the work, and the balanced and brilliant economy of the barest essentials is lost. The present transcription contains every note of the original and works exclusively with the material provided by Bach. The few changes stem from the lute and piano versions written by the composer himself (BWV 964, 968, 1000). The search for solutions to the problems mentioned in the above paragraph is limited to fingering and to textual interpretation dependent on fingering. Indeed, guitar fingering includes its share of endless variations for one and the same combination of notes, and each variation produces a different musical meaning. The arranger intervenes to penetrate this variety and to sort out alternatives which serve as foundations for meaning. In contrast to the violinist, the guitarist can hold certain notes while proceeding to others. For example, the guitarist can play middle voices and basses legato and exchange the latent polyphony of the passage work for a fully realized polyphony.

In all of this the preferred solutions are those which serve the interest of instrumental sonority and at the same time do justice to baroque metrics, agogics, phrasing, and articulation. Thus the technique of the arrangement and the intention of the interpreter are one and the same process from the very beginning. A similar purpose lies behind the retention of the original keys. For reasons of playing technique, transpositions are usually made from G minor and C major to the more usual A minor and D major keys of compositions for guitar. The present arrangements, however, do not resort to this tactic. The reasons for this are the following: to preserve the unique character of the keys (which also comes to clear expression on the guitar) and to retain the tensive relationship between the keys on this first performance of all these works on guitar.

***

When I look back through this text thirteen years later, I conclude that the commentary still seems to me to be valid from today's perspective.

With reference to the present recording, however, I feel compelled to seize on two remarks requiring up-to-date supplementation.

First, I stated that »the more polyphonically and chordally developed structure of the violin works is better suited to the possibilities of the guitar.« I should have been more specific, referring to the »structure of the violin sonatas,« for it not without reason that I then limited myself to the transcription of the sonatas and postponed an additional project involving the partitas completing the cycle. The partitas are indeed more specific to the violin. The introductory movements and fugues in the sonatas continue to pose considerable problems for the modern violin, and their in part massive polyphony without a doubt can be more clearly accommodated on a guitar. What a very great difference there is between the organically flowing Prelude in E major, which once more seems to transcend Vivaldi, and the intricate, majestic Fugue in C major! The one is a perfectly idiomatic violin piece, and the other is a structure of »absolute music« which, in the final analysis, could be rendered on any polyphonic instrument.

Most of the movements of the partitas are predominantly linear. They are at least as specific to the violin as the fast concluding movements of the sonatas and, soberly viewed, do not really cry out for a guitar.

With due consideration of this problem complex, I have in fact worked so long on the transcriptions of the partitas. I had to do some testing and rejecting until I found the stringent solutions acceptable to me.

The second point that I am nuancing in content today concerns the statement »As is well known, Bach himself...reworked...the third partita...for baroque lute.« This indeed is the idea widely held by editors and interpreters, but I would like to set it in contrast to a quotation from Die Klavierwerke Bachs, the standard work of the early Bach researcher Hermann Keller. He begins by praising Bach's harpsichord transcription of the adagio of the Sonata in C major and then goes on to state: »From this masterpiece it is a broad leap to the schoolboy translation which, according to an allegedly genuine autograph of 1737 (!), Bach is supposed to have made of the third partita for violin solo, in E major ... That Bach, after his masterful translation of the prelude in the Ratswahl-Cantata, is supposed to have written such a bungling piece, is incredible, even if the manuscript is supposed to be genuine.« Without speculating about how or why it is that a manuscript in Bach's hand need not necessarily be synonymous with his authorship or going into all the diverse musicological and compositional-technical critical points involved in this »lute version,« it suffices for me to conclude: As a musician, purely empirically, I agree phenomenologically with this verdict and refuse to accept the version ascribed to Bach with too much ease. I have taken over only a very few, hardly noticeable passages of genuinely beautiful and helpful part leading from this manuscript, and thus for me the Partita in E major remains part of the violin cycle and no »lute suite.«

In my arrangement technique I have continued along the path on which I set out in the sonatas and thus have refrained from tinkering with one of the most highly praised masterpieces of music history. After all, why should I second-guess the composer? I have enough confidence in this music and in the representational possibilities of my instrument and would rather concentrate my efforts on tracing the original phrasing and articulation in the guitar fingering or on making it possible to render the tempos typical of the violin. In only a very few moments, especially in certain tone doublings in the chaconne, I have taken advantage of the tonal range of the guitar and have included octavings below at some points. As far as ornamentations are concerned, I have been even more economical in comparison to my sonata version.

The choice of instrument also resulted in a characteristic and, where possible, striking modification in sound. This is the result of a natural, irreversible process which I leave up to the listener to recognize and to evaluate. When I let the accompanying text to the sonatas work in on me today, I still feel the spirit of those times - as if it once had been very important to prove something or to legitimize it.

In my current occupation with the partitas I am guided really only by the need to undertake with my versions further interpretation of this great, inexhaustible music.

Frank Bungarten, 1988 and 2001

Translated by Susan Marie Praeder