JAVS Spring 2025

Featured Article

Transcribing BWV 997 for Unaccompanied Viola by Namgon Lee Unaccompanied works, especially written for melodic instruments with highly contrapuntal texture, present artistic and technical challenges. Often, these works investigate the limitations and possibilities of the instrument. Historically, composers have imagined unique and creative solutions to overcome the perceived boundaries of the instrument for which they wrote. The ability to imply full polyphony with a solo, single-line instrument not only reflects the composer’s virtuosity but demonstrates the instrument’s unrealized potential. 1 Although a significant number of concertos and sonatas were written for the viola in the 1700s, the modern-day baroque violist is faced with limited unaccompanied music for viola prior to the twentieth century. 2 A method piece by Michel Corrette (1707-1795), published in 1782 (but perhaps was written as early as the 1760s), represents the first extant pedagogical source to include unaccompanied viola music. 3 However, these pieces are fairly short, lasting no more than three lines. More complex and publicly performable unaccompanied music began to appear in the early nineteenth century, such as 41 Caprices (c.1805) by Bartolomeo Campagnoli (1751-1827) and 12 Etudes (c. 1800) by Franz Anton Hoffmeister (1754-1812). 4 This is in stark contrast to violin and cello, whose earliest known unaccompanied repertoire dates back to 1676 and 1691, respectively. 5 One solution to address this sparsity includes transcribing compositions written for other instruments. In fact, transcription commonly appeared during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries–including in the output of J.S. Bach, who often transcribed pieces by other composers, and even his compositions. 6 For example, Bach reworked the first movement of the third Brandenburg Concerto for the sinfonia of BWV 174. 7 Also, the opening chorus of BWV 207 is a reworking of

the third movement of the first Brandenburg Concerto. 8 Inspired by this, baroque oboist and composer Bruce Haynes (1942-2011) imitated Bach’s practice, creating six additional “New Brandenburg Concertos” based on his cantatas. 9 Moreover, musicologist and conductor Peter Walls claims that Bach freely changed texture when adapting music from one instrument to another, and this might suggest he was more relaxed about instruments’ timbre as well. 10 For example, one of the most radical changes Bach made to his music was transcribing Harpsichord Concerto in D minor (BWV 1052) for SATB soloists and chorus, obligato organ, strings, and oboes (BWV 146 and 188). 11 As shown, most of Bach’s transcriptions involve shaping ensemble music into a different ensemble makeup. However, some of his transcriptions originate from unaccompanied works. Specifically, Bach transcribed the fugue from the Cello Suite in C minor (BWV 995) for solo lute setting. 12 This rare case indicates that Bach might have generated breadth of lute suites from other works. Given how often Bach recycled his music, it is convincing to use this method to generate more repertoire for the viola. In this article, I will examine what changes made to these transcriptions and explore the impact of implied polyphony. Finally, I will examine the reverse-engineering outcomes through a transcription of Bach’s Lute Suite in C minor (BWV 997) for unaccompanied viola.

Bach’s Lute Works: BWV 995, 997 and 1000. There are two general notation types of lute

transcription: one in tablature, which is more common way to notate lute music, and standard staff notation. Bach’s lute transcriptions exist in both forms, as shown in Table 1. Although Bach owned a lute, we do not know whether he was a proficient player or not. However,

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 41, No. 1, Spring 2025

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