As Threatened--

For the folks at home who might wonder about such things--no, I was not enlivened with a sudden fervour for practicing the guitar. Well, I was, but since my idea of burning inspiration is apparently to get out the guitar for five minutes twice a week and try to muddle past the fourth bar of "Cavatina," I'm not sure that it counts.

What prompted this particular post--I was at work on Saturday when the "Prelude" from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major came on the radio. That is a piece I very much enjoy, though, truth be told, I could probably listen to many a more mundane composition being turned out on a rich-sounding cello and still think I was on the borders of heaven. The interesting thing this time around was that the "Prelude" wasn't being played on a cello at all; the airwaves were transporting the clean, woody tones of a guitar. My intelligent reaction to this innovation was: "Who woulda thunk it?"

When I got home and started digging around for recorded proof, however, I discovered that I had been the last to get the memo about playing the aforesaid prelude on the guitar--everybody does it, to all appearances. Here is one of the more popular (in YouTube's estimation), a Norwegian guitarist named Tor Inge, who takes it a good deal more slowly than many other players--exactly where I like to hear it:



It's like comparing apples and oranges (so I am thankfully relieved of any obligation to compare) but I had the fortune to happen upon this steel-string guitar arrangement, which is similarly enthralling. The guitarist here, whose versatility made yesterday's post, has a quality-not-quantity YouTube channel called guitarvangelist: