Introduction
For most of my life I have played the classical guitar. Like many of my generation, I learned my way through the schools of Matteo Carcassi, Mauro Giuliani and Fernando Sor. But over the years, I became more interested in Renaissance and Baroque music. There is a large enough guitar repertoire from the Classic Period after 1800, but much less from prior periods. So, to play Baroque or Renaissance music on the guitar, I had to look for transcriptions and arrangements for other instruments, such as the lute, harpsichord, organ, voices, cello or violin.
Over the past 20 years, I have written and arranged scores that really resonated in me as listener and as player, always looking for ‘new’ works that did not yet exist as transcriptions for guitar. I selected them following my own taste and preferences. Since then, I have arranged more than 500 works by 45 composers, ranging from Francesco da Milano (died 1543) to Georg Friedrich Händel (died 1759). All works have been engraved by myself (with exception of 8 sonatas of S.L. Weiss, published by Metropolis Music Publishers), and all are in standard notation. A tab version can be added upon request.
I never intended these works for public consumption. But if people like them, why not share them?
A great part of my pieces are Free to download.
Please play and enjoy some of my hard work.
Ben Beuming
Famous Composers
Francesco Canova da Milano (1497 - 1543)
Francesco Canova da Milano (Francesco da Milano, also known as Il divino, was an Italian lutenist and composer. He was born in Monza, near Milan (1497), and worked for the papal court for almost all of his career. Francesco was heralded throughout Europe as the foremost lute composer of his time. More of his music is preserved than of any other lutenist of the period, and his work continued to influence composers for more than a century after his death in 1543.
Simone Molinaro (1565 - 1615)
Simone Molinaro was born in Genoa, Italy. He studied music with his uncle, Giovanni Battista dalla Gostena, who was maestro di capella at the Genoa Cathedral of San Lorenzo. In 1593, Gostena was murdered on the steps of the church , and Molinaro succeeded him in his post at the Cathedral in 1599. The same year he published Intavolatura di liuto, containing lute works both by himself and intabulations (transcriptions) of pieces by …
Johann Pachelbel (1653 - 1706)
Johann Pachelbel was one of the dominant figures of late seventeenth-century European keyboard music. He was a contemporary of François Couperin and the Englishman Purcell, and came chronologically between Buxtehude and Bach. Pachelbel ended his career as composer, teacher and organist at the St. Sebaldus church in his homeplace Nuremberg. In 1678 he became organist at the Protestant Predigerkirche at Erfurt, the ancestral ….
Domenico Scarlatti (1685 - 1757)
Domenico Scarlatti was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified primarily as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style and he was one of the few Baroque composers to transition into the classical period. Like his renowned father Alessandro Scarlatti, he composed in a variety of musical forms, although today he …
Silvius Leopold Weiss (1687 - 1750)
Silvius Leopold Weiss was probably the greatest composer of lute music in history, ranking with Francesco da Milano and John Dowland, the two outstanding figures of the Renaissance lute. Weiss certainly was the most technically accomplished lutenist of the 18th century. S.L. Weiss was born in 1687 in Grottkau, today known as Grodkow, Poland. He grew up in a family of lute players. His father, a professional lutenist, initiated him, his younger brother and his sister…
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750)
Johann Sebastian Bach is generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. He was born in Eisenach (Germany) into a great musical family. He was the youngest son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians. who likely taught him violin and basic music theory. His uncles were all professional musicians, whose posts included church organists, court chamber musicians, and composers. After becoming an orphan at age 10, he moved in with …