Lute Suite No. 1 in E Minor

Although some consider the E Minor Suite to be an original work for lute, a manuscript copy is designated for the lute-harpsichord—an instrument Bach’s Weimar employer, Duke Ernst August, prized for its lute-imitating sonorities, and one Bach later purchased in Leipzig for his own domestic use. Composed between 1710 and 1720, perhaps tellingly, the Suite is written on the two staves normally used for keyboard music rather than in lute tablature (a form of notation based not on pitches but on fingers). The opening “Praeludio” is marked Passaggio, implying a certain freedom reflecting the freewheeling Stylus Phantasticus (Fantastic Style) whose elements are eventually combined with spiky rhythmic contours indebted to France. And to round off there’s a lively, discipline-instilling fugal pendant. Preliminaries over, Bach now embarks on the time-honoured dance sequence. A sturdy “Allemande” is offset by the delicate “Courante” intent on sustaining a prevailing sobriety which is intensified in the languorous melancholy of the “Sarabande”. Animation finally asserts itself, however, with an interpolated extra, a fidgety “Bourrée” heralding the concluding “Gigue”. About J.S. Bach’s Lute Suites A few sundry pieces such as the magnificent Prelude, Fugue and Allegro, BWV 998 and the more intimate C minor Prelude, BWV 999 aside, Bach’s music for solo lute is corralled into four standalone suites spanning some quarter of a century; and unlike those for keyboard or cello, they were never intended as a set. Indeed, idiomatically reimagined, two of them revisit earlier works for solo cello and violin. Despite their intimate and beguiling appeal, the Suites are not without controversy. Were they conceived for the lute, or rather for the lautenwerck, a gut-stringed harpsichord producing a lute-like timbre. Bach latterly owned fine examples of both instruments—though his proficiency on the lute is open to speculation.