Good question, Dennis. Interestingly, as Bach was running out of space, the last 19 bars of the Allegro movement are written in a more concise organ tablature. That would be an odd thing to hand to a lute player to play from!
Hopkinson Smith published (Ut Orpheus Edizioni) an edition in D Major, but states in his preface that, were he to do it again he would play it in the more 'pastoral' key of Eb. It's not often an editor rubbishes his own edition in the Preface! Most players play it in D. Not sure about Jacob Lindberg, but I do know that he used different tunings, even for the first six courses, based on tunings found at the time of Reusner. My own position is that Bach wrote all his 'lute' music for his lauten clavier - but had lute players, possibly Weiss and other famous players, in mind, thinning the texture as compared to his solo keyboard pieces. But there again, the thinning out of the texture may have had something to do with the muddy sound of his largely gut-string keyboard. Rob MacKillop -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
