What happens, as commentator Steven just confirmed, is that the passage starts fine as the previous measure had the thumb sounding each downbeat. The arpeggio starts fine, but over a measure or two, the feeling of where the downbeat is migrates from the first G# to the last E, on the third string played by the thumb. Even when you are aware of the problem the tendency is still there. I played it this way for years, even after a violinist friend pointed it out to me.
I have made the claim that everyone plays it wrong, including John Williams, so let's do a quick survey on YouTube to see if I'm right. Just think, a few years ago, this would have taken a long time to assemble the recordings. But now, we can do it in a few minutes. Ok, first up is Andrey Lebedev and the passage starts around the 30 second mark:
Nope, same problem. He covers the "bump" at the end when we would have two sixteenth notes, both as the beginning of the beat, with a little "luftpause." Next, Sean Shibe:
Nope, same thing. He tries to cover both the entrance into the shifted beat placement and the exit at the end with a diminuendo so we aren't quite sure what we heard. Next Mateusz Kowalski:
Extra points for cool camera angles, but no, same problem. Again, he tries to cover the transition by playing a couple of notes very softly. Next Andrea González Caballero:
Aha! She actually does keep pretty strictly to the beat placement throughout as is particularly evident from the ending of the passage which transitions into the scalar passage with no "bump." Mind you, in other respects the performance isn't great, but she gets this right. Next, fellow Canadian Drew Henderson:
He does a little rubato just before the arpeggio section which obscures things a little bit and, again, a little luftpause at the end, but for the whole section, the thumb determines the beat placement. Why am I picking just on guitarists? Ok, let's listen to Arthur Grumiaux on violin:
Uh-oh, same problem but for a different reason. In this case it is because of the change of bow, but again, the beginning of the beat migrates to the lowest note in the arpeggio. Plus, his tempo wanders around and I'm not crazy about his tone. Next, Rupert Boyd.
Good job! He keeps the beat securely in the right place, so no "bump" or need for a diminuendo or pause at the transition. How about Itzak Perlman?
Nope, same problem, but he almost sells the transition to us by ignoring the problem completely! No weak-ass diminuendo or luftpause for him! One more? How about Ana Vidovic:
Nope, same problem with a diminuendo to hide the transition. I'm almost afraid to put up Hilary Hahn as she is my favorite violinist and she even makes a specialty of the solo violin suites. Oh, what the heck.
I had to listen to that three times and I'm still not exactly sure how she does it. She starts the arpeggio section by slightly extending the first G#. For much of the section it is hard to tell where the beat is exactly, so at the end, the transition seems to come quite naturally. It works. I think that this passage is really much easier on guitar if, that is, you have good control over the thumb.
I know, I know, someone is going to say, "yeah, buddy, well just put your thumb where your mouth is! Let's hear you do it!" Fair enough, but I would need a couple of weeks to get the piece back in my fingers. And I'm not going to play the whole thing because there is some stuff later on that just kills my left hand these days. But that opening couple of pages I find quite easy, yes, even with the correct beat placement.
So, was this an interesting exercise?
8 comments:
I'm certainly no expert on Bach's music but I thought it had been well established that Bach wrote no music specifically for the lute. He had some special lute-keyboard which was essentially an improved version of the lute stop on harpsichords. As a fan of the late harpsichordist Christiane Jaccottet I was familiar with her playing some pieces on a reconstruction of the instrument. I show the link to the youtube page where she plays the referenced suite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVaLxTtAfzc
So isn't this just an instance of a problem of transcribing works from one instrument to another? It's just that this problem wasn't noticed enough to force a re=arrangement of the work.
I guess there isn't enough interest to take the music of an actual lutenist Sylvius Weiss for guitarists. I am only have one LP with Yepes playing a Weiss suite on guitar.
I don't think this issue has come up before at the Music Salon, so thanks for raising the question. Here, by the way, is perhaps the most thorough article debunking the Bach lute music question: https://www.thisisclassicalguitar.com/bachs-lute-suites-clive-titmuss/
I find a lot of that article not up to scholarly standards as, while he makes some very good points, he relies entirely too often on mind-reading and speculation. If I had a spare week I could probably write a critique of the paper. But I take a more pragmatic view. I am a guitarist, not a lutenist and my view of the Bach "lute suites" is that they are simply fair game to be included in the guitar repertoire. This Prelude is the perfect example: it is a fantastic piece, in a great key for guitarists and frankly, I much prefer it to the solo violin original. I think it really needs the bass notes. I don't actually care whether it is playable on the lute or not. I just finished memorizing the two gavottes from the so-called "Third Lute Suite" and again, they have fantastic bass lines and inner voices not present in the original version which was the Cello Suite No. 5.
Thanks for the link to the Jaccottet performance.
When I was an active performer I played quite a bit of music by Sylvius Leopold Weiss, but unless you have an eight string guitar, or ten strings in the case of Yepes, the bass lines cause some real problems for guitarists. But he is often played on guitar despite that.
I understand and agree that it is immaterial if the Bach Lute pieces were composed to be playable on the lute. Guitarists adapt all kind of works. I am glad to hear that Weiss' pieces are played reasonably often as I have not seen in it myself. Certainly there were few recordings. The problem quite frankly is that guitarist have not made enough effort in the last century to continue the expansion of the literature, particularly for ensembles and orchestral concertos. I like the effort you have made to write for violin and guitar. I think violin and harp would also work well.
Both harp and guitar have many technical issues in writing a challenging but playable piece. The average composer doesn't get much experience or exposure to either instrument. I have known a few harpists and they all say that current composers with few exceptions are constantly writing keyboard parts for the harp. Even my perusal of historical scores reveals very pedestrian or poorly playable or notationally confusing written parts. So practically speaking harpists and guitarists will probably have to shoulder the compositional burden or see their instruments become museum artifacts.
A composer friend of mine told me that in his view, harp was one of the hardest instruments to write for.
Out of curiosity does your composer friend not say the same thing about guitar - or does he play it? I became quite interested in the harp years years ago, both for classical music and the Gaelic tradition of Alan Stivell.
The major problem is that composers see the large piano-like expanse of strings and think piano. If you stop and think about being seated behind a large harp and playing it with the left and right hands and having to reach around the harp to access the lower strings the physical limitations are obvious. Harp parts don't have to be technically impressive to be evocative. Debussy wrote very ordinary looking harp parts that work exceedingly well.
I find classical guitar more difficult to visualize, not because of the left hand but for the right hand. In the harp and with most instruments both hands do similar actions or one doesn't use the fingers as with bowing or holding the instrument.
I think that part of the problem with the harp is organizing the pedaling for chromatic notes. But I haven't written for harp, so don't know any details. My friend wrote a number of pieces for guitar which I played and he seemed to have no difficulty. He didn't play guitar. If you consult a fingerboard chart for the left hand so you don't ask for chords that are impossible and if you don't go too crazy with the right hand, it is not that difficult. The problems often come from writing what is really piano music for guitar!
Thanks. For very chromatic music two harps should be used, otherwise the harpist is spending their time rewriting the piece rather than play it well. As for guitar the left hand is no problem for me to visualize. It is the combination of that with the right hand fingers moving around on th strings that I find difficult to grasp well. I mean for completely idiomatic but challenging guitar writing. Obviously if it is kept simple it is not a problem and a good guitarist can make something awkward work in make-do fashion. But the fact remains that the classical guitar is rather unusual for its varied demands on both hands' fingers.
Re the guitar: I can't argue with you there! In fact, even as a seasoned guitarist, I find it quite difficult to write solo music for guitar. I much prefer writing for guitar in ensemble.
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