Category: Classical Music

Classical Music

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Updates on Project Bach-Wrote-What?!

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. In the two years, I have written eight 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.

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Launching Project Bach Wrote What ?!

As mentioned previously in Playing Bach Cello Suite 1, I picked up cello playing seriously again, after two decades of neglect. For months now, I've playing with great enthusiasm the first suite of unaccompanied cello music from Bach. In the process I discovered a general lack of music written for an unaccompanied solo cellist. There is a lack of knowledge about multi-voice-sounding music written for a single cellist to perform. I am talking about music that delivers a full-range audio experience through the use of arpeggios (broken chords), double-stops, and the like commonly found in Bach's cello suites.

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Playing Bach Cello Suite 1

For two decades I've kept a year-end routine starting after Thanksgiving, lasting through Christmas, and usually ending shortly after New Year's Eve. I would take my cello out of the closet, and dust it off. I would practice for a few hours every two days, building up calluses anew. I transcribed Bach Cello Suite 1 …

Continue reading "Playing Bach Cello Suite 1"

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Cello sheet music: Adagio from Bach Organ Toccata

Folks, more free Bach cello music can be found in this new article. This is part of the Clean and Free Sheet Music initiative I've undertaken.

I took a detour from my usual Bach cello suite transcriptions this time. A few weeks ago someone on Reddit posted a question asking for identification of music. It was a recording of Mstislav Rostropovich playing the cello for the Emperor of Japan, at the White House in 1994. The first piece at 0:37 caught my attention. I swore that I knew this music well - I could hum along ahead of Rostropovich. But I could not recall what this was. The music stuck in my head for days. The mystery drove me crazy.

I tried all sorts of "find the music" magics online, including by singing, by humming, by audio file, by playing on a on-screen keyboard, by entering notes explicitly, and by typing in the contour (shape). Nothing worked. Clearly this was a famous cello piece, but I just could not find it.

Not until I randomly searched for "Rostropovich" and various terms, that I hit the right combination of words. In hindsight, I could have found it in a few minutes, with just "Rostropovich adagio". So, it turned out that this piece was actually Bach's organ toccata, BWV 564. Pablo Casals transcribed it for the cello, and apparently it was one of Rostropovich's favorite piece.

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Allemande from Bach Cello Suite 1 (BWV 1007)

This is one of the free and clean Bach cello music I am making available, as I transcribe them. See the parent article for context.

Here is a clean sheet showing only notes. You can print it out and add your own bowing and fingering marks. Click on the image to go to the PDF file.

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Prelude from Bach Cello Suite 1 (BWV 1007)

This is one of the free and clean Bach cello music I am making available, as I transcribe them. See the parent article for context. This is one of the most well-known piece, and as a result was the first I played. But it is the last one I entered into Sibelius.

Here is a clean sheet showing only notes. You can print it out and add your own bowing and fingering marks. Click on the image to go to the PDF file.

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Minuet 2 from Bach Cello Suite 1 (BWV 1007)

This is one of the free and clean Bach cello music I am making available, as I transcribe them. See the parent article for context.

Here is a clean sheet showing only notes. You can print it out and add your own bowing and fingering marks. Click on the image to go to the PDF file.

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Gigue from Bach Cello Suite 1 (BWV 1007)

This is one of the free and clean Bach cello music I am making available, as I transcribe them. See the parent article for context.

Here is a clean sheet showing only notes. You can print it out and add your own bowing and fingering marks. Click on the image to go to the PDF file.

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Music sung by Vocaloid Miriam

In 2005 I was mesmerized by Vocaloid, a singing voice synthesizer from Yamaha. I composed a three-part acapella piece, with all three voices sung by Vocaloid Miriam (also see this).

Your Fish Tank was writen in 2005. It is the first piece of music I synthesized using Vocaloid Miriam. Bruce Yates graciously allowed me to use his underwater pictures in my YouTube video showcasing this music. See lyric at the end of this article.

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Music Inspired by Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is a great man. From the first book of his I picked up, River Out of Eden, to the last one I read, The Greatest Shown on Earth, I've never ceased to be amazed by how his passion of biology and his talent at articulating the grandeur of nature ooze out of every single page.

Dawkins is the person who helped me find my atheistic voices in the vocabulary of evolutionary biology. And for that I've dedicated many work of art to the great man. For instance, The Lost Cause was wholly inspired by the dozen of books on evolution penned by the man that I've read. Similarly, I have written Wikipedia articles on some of his books, such as River Out of Eden and The Ancestor's Tale, to help guide those who are still searching for their voices.

Here, however, I collect music I have written that are inspired by Dawkins' work.

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Vocal Music from 2006 and 2007

These are some vocal music I wrote between 2006 and 2007, while attending Conrad Cummings' evening music composition class at Juilliard. Some of these were sight-readings in class. One was performed at a bar.

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Rearrangements as Gifts 2007-2010

Here are a few examples of music I rearranged as gifts for special occasions in the past. None of these are complex nor recorded. Sorry about the MIDI-quality mp3 files. I know they hurt your ears. They do mine, too.

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Wedding Suite 2007 for Clarinet Trio and Brass Quintet

The Wedding Suite 2007 includes piano trio pieces I wrote in the past, and brass quintet I wrote specifically for the wedding. The suite was performed at Krystina and Mike's wedding on April 28th, 2007. Clarinet trio recording was done a week before, performed by Gilad Harel, Alistair MacRae & Wei-En Hsu on April 20th, 2007. Th brass quintet rehearsal was recorded on April 26th, 2007, sight-read by Mike Blutman/Chris Venditti (trumpets), Kelly Csillam (horn), Nick Hagen (trombone) and Edward Vinson (tuba).

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Courante from Bach Cello Suite 1 (BWV 1007)

This is one of the free and clean Bach cello music I am making available, as I transcribe them. See the parent article for context.

Here is a clean sheet showing only notes. You can print it out and add your own bowing and fingering marks. Click on the image to go to the PDF file.

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Sarabande from Bach Cello Suite 1 (BWV 1007)

This is one of the free and clean Bach cello music I am making available, as I transcribe them. See the parent article for context.

It is the shortest piece in the suites. Here is a clean sheet showing only notes. You can print it out and add your own bowing and fingering marks. Click on the image to go to the PDF file.

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Minuet 1 from Bach Cello Suite 1 (BWV 1007)

This is one of the free and clean Bach cello music I am making available, as I transcribe them. See the parent article for context.

This is one of the shortest pieces in the suites. So I transcribed it first. Here is a clean sheet showing only notes. You can print it out and add your own bowing and fingering marks. Click on the image to go to the PDF file.

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Clean and Free Sheet Music for Bach Cello Suites

I have over the years looked online for sheet music for Bach Cello Suites. It usually happened when I engaged in one of the annual holiday rituals in my household. This is where I brought my cello of out its cold storage, wiped dust off, and played it until I redevelop finger strength and rediscover the joy of growing callouses on my fingertips.

In the early days of the internet, one had to pay for this 300-year-old music. And usually lots of money got you poorly scanned copies of poorly printed scores. Nowadays the quality is better in general. In addition, good folks have been transcribing this music, and have uploaded them them for you to download, for free, such as this and this.

Some of these modern PDF files are full of transcription errors. Even with the professionally-typeset scores, most of the times bowing and fingering marks don't work for me. Normally I would white out all markings from a downloaded score. Then I would write my own, on top of the notes. This was the only way I could play this beautiful music without making unpleasant sounds, given my poor skill set.

I imagine I am not the only one to want to do this. So I am going to start making these clean, unmarked sheet music available from now on. I am transcribing them in Sibelius as I play them. At the rate I play, I may not be able to finish them all before I kick the bucket. But it's still worth a try. It may help a soul or two. I'll also post my own markings. They probably only work for myself. Use my markings if they help you. Ignore them if they annoy you.