Guitar Transcriptions

"The playing is technically sound, stylishly embellished, and in general a model of refinement, taste, and restraint. Voorhorst's tone is consistently round and full."
- Rings, American Record Guide July/August 2002

"...intelligently scored and very well played, from the solo flute Partita in A minor BWV 1013 to the keyboard Preludes in E and C and the solo violin sonata in G minor BWV 1001 (here transposed to A minor). Equally ambitious is guitarist Enno Voorhorst's transcription of the harpsichord concerto BWV 974, which originally was an oboe concerto by Alessandro Marcello... Voorhorst is unquestionably a fine musician whose mastery of the guitar in this repertoire is beyond doubt; perhaps he will offer some performances of original guitar works on his next recording. The sound is fully supportive of the solo instrumental setting and affords a natural, intimate acoustic."
- David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com, February 7, 2002

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685 at Eisenach, where his father was employed as a town musician and as a member of the court orchestra, the youngest of six children of a family that was part of an extended musical dynasty. After the death of his parents, he moved at the age of ten to Ohrdruf, to the house of his eldest brother, Johann Christoph, organist there at the Michaeliskirche. His schooling in Ohrdruf continued until 1700, when he moved to the Michaelisschule at Lüneburg some two hundred miles away. Two years later he began his professional career with employment at the court in Weimar, followed very shortly by appointment as organist at Arnstadt, where his family had connections. In 1707 some dissatisfaction with the conditions and musical possibilities at Arnstadt led him to enter the necessary test for appointment as organist at Mühlhausen, where he married his first wife, his second cousin Maria Barbara. The following year he was appointed court organist at Weimar, where, as in 1703, he also served as a violinist or viola player in the court orchestra. In 1714 he was appointed Konzertmeister, but his relationship with his employer, Duke Wilhelm Ernst, was uneasy, partly through his collaboration in the musical activities of the co-regent of Weimar, Duke Ernst August. In 1716 Bach was passed over for the position of Kapellmeister, which he might have expected on the death of the existing incumbent, and this led him to look elsewhere. His association with Duke Ernst August provided a way out, when employment as Court Kapellmeister to the Duke's new brother-in-law, Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen was offered on relatively generous terms. Duke Wilhelm Ernst was unwilling to release him from his duties at Weimar, showing his displeasure finally by imprisoning Bach for a month, before dismissing him from his service.

The court at Cöthen offered all that Bach could have wished. Prince Leopold was young and an enthusiastic musical amateur and the Pietist persuasions of the court meant that there was no call for church music. Instead Bach could devote himself primarily to secular music for the court orchestra and its members in a fruitful series of concertos, sonatas and suites. The period was a happy one for Bach, marred only by the sudden death of his wife in 1720, while he was at Carlsbad in the company of the Prince. The following year he married again. His new wife, Anna Magdalena, was the youngest daughter of the court trumpeter at Weissenfels and employed as a court singer at Cöthen. Prince Leopold's marriage in the same year to a woman whom Bach described as 'amusica', however, made life at court much less satisfactory. In December 1722 Bach applied for the position of Cantor in Leipzig, where he moved the following spring, exchanging his position at a princely court for the duties of organist and choirmaster, soon to be varied by additional work with another collegium musicum, the ensemble established by Telemann at Leipzig University. Bach remained in Leipzig for the rest of his life, at first providing the church cantatas necessary for his primary employment, then re-arranging earlier concertos for the collegium musicum and consolidating the very considerable body of work that he had already written.

Bach wrote and transcribed works for lute, drawing in part on works he had written for unaccompanied violin and unaccompanied cello. Various transcriptions of these and other works have been for the guitar, an instrument well suited to handling the contrapuntal textures of diverse instrumental compositions. The present transcriptions start with a version of the Partita in A minor, BWV 1013, for unaccompanied flute, written in the early 1720s or earlier, and belonging clearly to the period Bach spent at Cöthen. It has been suggested that in its form for solo flute it may, in fact, be a transcription, in part at least, of movements written for violin or other instruments. The guitar is able to add discreet implementation of the implied harmonies. The traditional French dance suite opening of an Allemande is followed by a Corrente, a slow Sarabande and a rapid final English Bourrée.