Ricardo Gallén plays the Prelude from BWV 998 by Johann Sebastian Bach on the Siccas Luthiers Legacy Doubletop. Four minutes of music that most guitarists spend years circling before they record it.
About the Prelude BWV 998
BWV 998 is the Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E flat major, written for lute or lute-harpsichord in Bach's late Leipzig years. Guitarists almost always move it to D major, where the open strings carry the bass line that the instrument otherwise cannot reach. What survives the transposition is the shape: a prelude built on a continuous flow of broken chords, over a bass that walks steadily through the harmony while the surface never stops moving.
The difficulty is not in the notes. It is in deciding what the piece is. Play the figuration evenly and it becomes a study; shape every phrase and it loses the pulse that holds it together. The balance between those two readings is where interpretations differ, and it is why the work rewards repeated listening. Our article on the Prelude, Fugue and Allegro BWV 998 looks at all three movements in detail.
Bach on the Guitar
Bach never wrote for the guitar, and yet no composer sits more firmly at the centre of its repertoire. The lute works, the cello suites and the violin sonatas and partitas have all been taken over, and each transfer involves decisions about register, voicing and ornamentation that the original score does not settle. Our overview of Bach on the classical guitar follows how that repertoire came to the instrument.
The Guitar
The Siccas Luthiers Legacy Doubletop follows the modern German double top ideal: a spruce top over Indian rosewood, French polish on body and soundboard, a 650 mm scale, a 52 mm nut and Der Jung tuners. A double top sandwiches a very light core between two thin layers of soundboard wood, which lets the top move more freely and gives the guitar a wider dynamic range than a traditionally built instrument. Our guide to fan-braced, double-top and lattice guitars explains the construction.
Siccas Luthiers is our own line. Each Siccas Luthiers guitar undergoes a careful setup and final inspection in our workshop in Karlsruhe before being shipped to our customers. Our article on Siccas Luthiers guitars describes the range.
Watch the Performance
You can hear Ricardo Gallén in Spanish repertoire in our article on his performance of Zambra Granadina by Albéniz, and explore the workshop line in our Siccas Luthiers collection.
