I created the website bachwrotewhat.com two years ago on a whim. My goal was to collect and showcase unaccompanied and modern cello music for the rest of us amateur cellists. As I chronicled compositions in this style that I came across, I also began writing a number of pieces of my own, which I now call “self-accompanied” cello music, inspired by modern and even pop music.

When I first launched the project, I wrote a self-accompanied version of The Swan by Saint-Saëns, as documented in this post. Even though every note of that beautiful melody found its way into the new composition, almost nobody could recognize its pedigree. The truth is that condensing both melody and harmony into what is essentially a single linear stream of notes is a difficult task.

In the case of The Swan, I eventually laid a separate melody track over the self-accompanied solo to prove a completely useless technical point to a certain person in my household: the melody had been there all along, just not in a form that the ear could easily recognize. I jokingly titled this double solo Swan × (1 + Bach).

In the two years since, I have written seven more self-accompanied cello pieces. By now, I have long since given up trying to present the original melodies in what I’ve come to call “recompositions.” True to form, all of the original melodic notes are still there, and in many cases the original harmonies and chord progressions survive as well. But once I’ve sketched out a few bars with some new ideas and motifs, I let the recomposition take on a life of its own.

Some of these works grew too complex and too demanding for me to play well. For instance, my recomposition of a Brahms piano intermezzo attempts to capture its rich counterpoint on a single cello. At a whopping six pages of sheet music, the piece takes nearly eight minutes to play. I called it Brahms Intercello.

My most recent work, titled Yesterday Came Suddenly: for a cello without company, is something of an exception. It’s uncharacteristically short, and it follows McCartney’s original melody quite closely. Rather than reworking the tune beyond recognition, I simply wove in melody-like lines inspired by his original guitar accompaniment between the vocal phrases.

For the first time, I wrote something simple enough that I could devote some mental bandwidth to interpretation and expression, while also managing to stay more or less in tune from beginning to end. Here you have it: Yesterday for a cello without company.

Another piece I can play with a degree expression is Barokan Farewell, a short variation on Ashokan Farewell by Jay Ungar.

All of my recompositions begin as earworms that refuse to leave me alone, not that I ever want them to. Here is my version of Angel by Sarah McLachlan, just one of many melodies that have taken up permanent residence in my head. I call it Bach in the Arms of an Angel.

Here is another earworm. After listening to Kevin Olusola play Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus, I couldn’t get the tune out of my head. Naturally, it received the bachwrotewhat treatment. As with all of these recompositions, I took the liberty of transposing the music to better suit my cello’s natural voice. I named the result Turn Your Eyes With Bach.

My rewrite of Gabriel’s Oboe by Ennio Morricone in early 2024 marked my transition from arranging popular music to recomposing it for self-accompanied cello. At that point, I more or less stopped caring whether anyone could recognize the original inspiration behind the music. Instead, I wanted these pieces to stand on their own, with their own internal logic and musical structure that I could breathe into them.

From then on, I began referring to my new works as recompositions. I titled this piece Gabriel’s Self-Accompanied Cello.

Stanley Myers’ Cavatina, written for the film The Deer Hunter, is one of my favorite tunes. The guitar arrangement for John Williams is simply exquisite. I recomposed it in what felt to me like the best possible way.

But, boy, I just couldn’t play it in tune while also navigating all of the technically demanding passages. One day I will re-record this piece and do it justice. I call my version Bach Wrote a Cavatina.

Last updated: 2026-06-24