Johann Paul von Westhoff (1656 – buried 17 April 1705) was a German Baroque composer and one of highest ranked violinists of his day.
The piece presented today is the 3rd from Six solo partitas published in Dresden in 1696, which are considered to be the earliest preserved known multi-movement pieces for solo violin. Westhoff’s writing is oriented to the German school, with solid themes and dense, ‘explicit’ polyphony. Therefore, once I found the right tonality and tuning I could quite easily set the work in a convincing way for guitar solo. The ornamented repetitions and the use of the capotasto at the 2nd fret, which will aim to recreate the original tonality (the baroque violin was tuned ½ tone lower than nowadays), it obviously left to the choice of the single player.
An absolute must for all baroque lover!
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