Bourree in E minor BWV996 Lute Suite No.1

The Work Commonly Known as “Lute Suite No. 1”

Bach’s Bourrée in E minor, BWV 996 is the fifth movement of his Suite in E minor, BWV 996.

The complete suite consists of six movements: Prelude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Bourrée, and Gigue.

Today, BWV 996 is often referred to as “Lute Suite No. 1,” although this was not a title or numbering system used by Bach himself.

The numbering became associated with the work through twentieth-century editions of Bach’s so-called lute music, particularly those prepared by the German lutenist and scholar Hans Dagobert Bruger (1894–1932), who published an influential collection of these works in 1921.

Was BWV 996 Really Written for the Lute?

Although BWV 996 has long been grouped among Bach’s “lute works,” its original instrumentation is not completely straightforward.

One surviving manuscript contains the words aufs Lauten Werck, which are generally understood as referring to the lautenwerk, or lute-harpsichord — a keyboard instrument designed to imitate the softer, plucked sound of the lute.

Modern scholarship has therefore suggested that BWV 996 may have been intended for this instrument rather than for an ordinary Baroque lute.

Whatever its original destination, the music adapts naturally to plucked-string instruments and has become firmly established in both lute and classical-guitar repertoire.

The Famous Bourrée

Of the six movements in BWV 996, the Bourrée has become particularly popular as an independent piece.

The bourrée originated as a French dance and is typically characterized by a lively duple meter and an upbeat. Bach’s movement follows a compact binary design, divided into two repeated sections.

Despite its short length, the piece contains much of what makes Bach’s contrapuntal writing so distinctive, and today it is one of the most familiar Bach pieces performed on the classical guitar.

Two Independent Melodic Voices

One of the most important features of this Bourrée is its two-part contrapuntal texture.

Rather than presenting a simple melody with an accompaniment underneath, both the upper and lower voices have their own melodic direction.

At times one voice rises while the other moves downward; elsewhere one line seems to answer or continue an idea introduced by the other.

The result is a kind of musical conversation between two independent lines, both of which contribute to the character and momentum of the piece.

On the classical guitar, these two voices are played simultaneously by a single performer, making it especially important to hear and shape them as separate musical lines rather than simply as a sequence of notes.

About This Classical Guitar Arrangement

This classical guitar version takes a relatively traditional approach, preserving the original two-part writing and overall structure of the Bourrée.

The fingering is adapted to make the music sit naturally on the guitar while retaining the independent movement of the upper and lower voices that gives the piece its distinctive contrapuntal character.