Bach's lute works, numbered from 995 to 1000 in Schmieder's Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, or Bach Work Register, are problematical works. For one thing, they're difficult or impossible to play on German lutes of Bach's time; some or all of them may have been intended for the Lautenwerk, a bizarre hybrid that looks like an enclosed lute with a harpsichord keyboard attached. One, the Suite for lute, BWV 995, is a transcription of one of Bach's suites for solo cello. American-Swiss lutenist Peter Croton plays the music here not on a ...
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Bach's lute works, numbered from 995 to 1000 in Schmieder's Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, or Bach Work Register, are problematical works. For one thing, they're difficult or impossible to play on German lutes of Bach's time; some or all of them may have been intended for the Lautenwerk, a bizarre hybrid that looks like an enclosed lute with a harpsichord keyboard attached. One, the Suite for lute, BWV 995, is a transcription of one of Bach's suites for solo cello. American-Swiss lutenist Peter Croton plays the music here not on a German Baroque lute or a Lautenwerk, but on the instrument generally known as an archlute, contending, based on the general influence of Italian music on Bach and other German composers of the early eighteenth century, that it could have been used for Bach's music. The restored 1640 archlute used here would have been an antique by Bach's time, however. He notes that the three lute pieces recorded here can thus be performed in the original keys with "very little adaptation." As a...
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