Lute Suite No. 3 in G Minor

If some of Bach’s lute music poses insoluble questions, at least things are a little clearer in the case of BWV 995. An autograph exists in Bach’s own hand and written on manuscript paper that would put the date somewhere close to 1730. Like BWV 996, it is notated for keyboard, but there is also a version (not by Bach) in the notation used by lutenists. The title page in French dedicates the contents to “Monsieur Schouster”, a Leipzig bookseller, and in using the word Pièces rather than Suite Bach was perhaps camouflaging a canny sleight of hand. BWV 995 is a reworking of the Cello Suite No. 5. Highly persuasive it is, too, adding idiomatic lute figuration and realising the latent harmonies of the necessarily more austere cello original. To a probing French-style “Prelude”, Bach appends the traditional dance foursome of “Allemande”, “Courante”, “Sarabande” and “Gigue”, garnished—before the “Gigue”—with a pair of dapper “Gavottes”. 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 stand-alone 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.