Baroque Music for Guitar CD by Karl Wolff

Recording this particular program was a wondrous event, full of challenge and discovery. Aside from the well-known Prelude, Fugue and Allegro by Johann Sebastian Bach, most of the material on this CD is new for classical guitarists, so a fair amount of time went to researching each composer and the history that surrounds them.

We intentionally chose music that was written in some of the truly unique forms that were invented and refined during the baroque era. Like the canonic sonatas of Telemann and the trio sonata by Antonio Lotti for flute, guitar and cello. It may also delight you, as it did us, to find that many of the musicians whose pieces we recorded knew one another, either personally or through the music they had written.

It is a long-standing tradition for musicians of all kinds to transcribe and perform music composed for instruments different from the ones that they typically play. I mention this here because the modern classical guitar as we know it didn't exist at the time that the compositions on this CD were written. While instruments similar to the modern guitar did exist during the baroque era and were available in a wide variety of models and styles, none among them were as popular as the harpsichord. This plucked keyboard was often the instrument of choice for accompaniment in oratorios or operas, and noted composers of that time wrote and performed a large number of solo works for it. Modern guitars, both louder and more reliably in tune than their forerunners, are able to play much of the beautiful and challenging music that was originally written for the harpsichord during the baroque era.

Domenico Girolamo Scarlatti (1685-1757) enjoyed some success composing operas and cantatas but is most remembered for his hundreds of keyboard sonatas. Nearly all of these are short works in simple binary form in which he gave free reign to his imagination, creating pieces that sound modern even now and that reflect the sights and sounds experienced by this well traveled musician. Scarlatti demonstrated virtuoso technique in these sonatas, employing numerous ornaments, rapidly repeated notes, hands crossing over one another, and wide jumps across the keyboard. Scarlatti's sonatas can be either bright and exuberant or introspective, in styles that translate well for solo guitar.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) transcribed several of his own harpsichord and violin pieces into arrangements for the baroque lute. The Prelude, Fugue and allegro, BWV 998, was most likely written on a keyboard instrument, for Bach did not play the lute though he was much enamored with its sound. This three movement work, which dates from around 1740, is inscribed "por la luth o Cembal" (for the lute or harpsichord) and may have been played by Bach on a Lautenwerk, a keyboard instrument with gut and metal strings designed to sound like a baroque lute. The twenty-four preludes and fugues from the Well Tempered Clavier represent Bach's derlication to the establishment of tempered intonation. Adapting his instruments to this more refined tuning allowed Bach to play in any and all keys and to expand his compositions freely into larger and more complicated works. The first Prelude and Fugue from this collection, BWV 846, is recorded here as an arrangement for solo guitar, transposed from the original key of C to A. In this key, the lyrical descending bass line of the prelude and the expansive range of the fugue can be played with fewer changes from the original scoring.

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) ranked among the most successful composers during his lifetime, completely overshadowing J. S. Bach whose music was not fully appreciated until some years after his death. George Frederick Handel once said of Telemann that he could write a work in eight parts as easily as anyone else could write a letter. The two Canonic Sonatas presented here come from a collection entitled "Six Canons or Sonatas for two German Flutes or two Violins, Composed by Georg Philip Telemann." The title for this publication illustrates the practice of leaving some latitude in the choice of instruments, providing more opportunity for sales to the flourishing amateur Hausmusik market in Hamburg during that time. Each movement of these sonatas is a two-part canon in which both musicians play precisely the same lines, but one measure apart.

Iain Osgood and I began exploring Telemann's collection of sonatas after playing the well-known third movement from sonata number one. The movement is a favorite duet among guitarists and has been performed and recorded many times. Playing it inspired us to look at the rest of the collection, and our exploration quickly turned into a labor of love. Telemann's unique treatment of harmony and rhythm in the individual movements, such as the suggestion of four-part arrangements for the voices of the slow middle movement and chromatic lines in the faster third movement of the first sonata are repeated in the subsequent sonatas giving the collection a structure that tickles the mind as much as the ear.

George Fredrick Handel (1685-1759) It is said that with the composition of Handel's oratorio the Messiah, in 1742, that the entire baroque tradition reached its climax. It should be remembered that in Italy, from which baroque music received its principal spark and direction, the period of new concepts in baroque style had ended some ten to twenty years earlier, giving way to the style galant, and that German composers like Bach, Handel and Telemann brought the baroque era to its consummation in the northern countries of Germany and England. Handel spent some of his early years as a musician in Italy, before settling in London in 1720 where he produced several operas at the King's Theatre influenced by his Italian experience. In addition to operas and oratorios, Handel also wrote cantatas, sacred music, orchestral, instrumental, and vocal works. The Air Lentemente and Fughetta are transcriptions from keyboard manuscripts, played here as guitar solos.

Johann Heinrich Buttsted (1666-1727), born in Bindersleben Erfurt, is famous for a paper he wrote in defense of solmization. He wrote German masses and harpsichord music including the Minuet in D minor transcribed here for guitar solo.

Antonio Lotti (1667-1740) composed operas and sacred music, beginning his career in Venice as organist at St. Marks and moving to Dresden in 1717 to direct the court opera. In this recording of Lotti's Sonata in G Major for flute, cello, and continuo, the guitar has taken the continuo part, an improvised chordal accompaniment that was probably first played on harpsichord by Lotti himself and which sets the rhythmic groundwork for the intertwining flute and cello melodies played by flutist Laura Campbell and cellist Chris White. Lotti's sonata is written in the form known as a trio setting of the chamber duet, the duet being between the flute and cello, with the guitar playing the continuo part to complete the harmony. This style of writing has been described by Manfred Bukofzer in Music in the Baroque Era as "one of the happiest and most influential innovations of baroque music."

Karl Wolff
December 10, 2003

SPACE