Transcriptions

The transcription business has always been a source of income for musicians. The idea of reworking a musical piece for a different instrument or combination of instruments than what the composer originally conceived may strike a modern listener as sacrilegious. But past composers were rarely so puritanical in their beliefs. And indeed, the person making the arrangement was often the composer himself. The reasons are many: to accommodate the available musicians on hand for a particular performance; to provide consumable, domestic keyboard versions of larger ensemble pieces; to appease a patron’s wishes; or simply to re-imagine the work with a wholly different timbre. There is nothing disingenuous about doing this. Most of us may turn away from hearing Debussy’s famous Clair de lune as transcribed for tuba quartet or Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Piano Sonata on banjo, but within reason, beauty is still in the ear of the beholder.
Consider Bach’s lovely Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro in E-flat (BWV 998). A favorite among modern guitarists, Bach indicated that it could be performed either on lute or keyboard. Indeed, the connection between those two instruments resonates in the frequent inclusion of a “lute” stop on many harpsichords. Bach drew inspiration from his exposure to the French lutenists, whose works provide a link between accompanied song of the Renaissance and the purely instrumental genres of the early Baroque.

Bach’s compositions seem particularly amenable to transcription. Available arrangements are high in both quality and quantity. Some were created by Bach himself, others by musicians within his immediate circle of friends and family. In the early 20th century, Leopold Stokowski helped carry Bach into new arenas with his symphonic arrangements of the solo organ works. Often, transcriptions of Bach help highlight his contrapuntal richness by spreading multiple voice parts across different instruments. This has been done with success to the keyboard fugues (transcribed for string quartet) and Goldberg Variations (transcribed for string trio). In other cases, Bach’s music for solo violin or cello is made harmonically fuller in transcriptions for keyboard. For instance, the keyboard version (BWV 964) of the Sonata in A Minor for solo violin (BWV 1003) allows Bach’s original melodic line to have support from full chords in the player’s left hand. Nothing in the structure is changed, but the texture becomes more colorful, more resonant. The effect works best, perhaps, in the slow movement, which relies on broken, incomplete chords in the violin version. Completed either by Bach himself or his son Wilhelm Friedemann, the keyboard transcription remains faithful and relatively simple, opting for fidelity to the original over the sometimes extravagant elaborations made possible by ten fingers.
Bach also took time to create a lute/keyboard version (BWV 995) of the magnificent Cello Suite in C Minor, BWV 1011. It was transposed to the key of G minor as that more comfortably suits the lute. Once again, all the movements are there; all the progressions are faithful to the original. Only now the counterpoint—sometimes only hinted at in the cello suite—can be realized, deepened, and brought to the fore. Though probably not intended, Bach added immeasurably to the exposure of this great suite by making the lute arrangement. For since his day, the work has lived on in the concert repertoire of guitarists, including such pivotal musicians as Andres Segovia, John Williams, and Paul Galbraith.

(c) Jason Stell