That famous cello prelude, deconstructed

 

Nov 21, 2022 ~ Nov 23, 2022

 

Recognize this?

It's been used in hundreds of TV shows and films.

It's so famous that if you can't remember this,

you can just google "that famous cello song" and

it will invariably pop up.

Yes, this prelude is well known, but perhaps

what's most compelling about it is how incredibly

simple it is.

The whole thing takes up just two pages of

music and it's composed for an instrument

that has just four strings.

Yet, it's considered a masterpiece that

world class cellists and even everyday music

listeners have revered for years.

So, what makes this composition so memorable,

timeless, and beautiful?

Well that's what Alisa is going to help

me deconstruct.

My name is Alissa Weilerstein, and we are

talking about the Prelude form Bach's first

cello suite in G Major.

This is Bach.

And these are his six cello suties.

No.1 G major / No.2 D minor / No.3 C major / No.4 Eb major / No.5 C minor / No.6 D major

Within each suite are various movements named

for dances, and they each have ery strict

These movements are all masterpieces in music,

and they get increasingly complex.

But before these dances begin, there's always 

a Prelude.

In the Bach suites, it's a way to establish

the key, to establish the motives, and it's

also a kind of improvisation. (1:44)

Nov 21, 2022

And this prelude in particular is revered

because it achieves a lot with just a few

very simple concepts.

To understand how, you first have to understand

the very basics of the song.

There's two main chords and keys you need

to remember here, G and D.

Bach plays them off each other the entire

prelude.

G is the home key for the compositin - it's

called the tonic.

And every tonic has a dominant - that's 

the note a fifth above it.

If this is all going in one ear and out the

next don't worry.

Just remember this, the tonic and dominant

work really well together.

Where the dominant represents tension, the

tonic represents release.

And the cello is the perfect vessel to showcase

this relationship.

This is a cello.

It's the closest in range and in ability to 

express to the human voice.

You start from the very low range down there.

You can imagine a really bass barition type

of sound to way up here.

This is really a violin range.

Because the prelude id written in G major,

it allows for a lot of open strings on the

cello, which gives the song a very natural

resonance.

An open string means I don't stop it with 

a finger.

So if I do nothing with my left hand, this

sounds a G.

With a G major chord, two out of the three

notes are open.

This natural sounding quality is what defines

the G major prelude, and it's exactly what

Bach exploits starting with its first few

measures.

 

Part two

The music

 

During the first half of the composition Bach

is constantly arpeggiating chords.

It's a simple technique that enriches the

harmony.

So this will be a G major chord.

And then arpeggiated.

There's a separation between the notes.

And then you go on.

But he also does something else.

For me, one of the most profound aspects of

this is the pedal point.

Which means that the bass note remains constant

even while the harmony is changing.

The bass note through the first four measures

is that very natural open G - its job is to

keep you rooted in the key of the song.

With the bass

So then you have that gravitas in there, even

while the harmony is moving around.

After these four measures though, things start

to shift.

Bach starts to pull the song away from the

tonic to the dominant.

Then we loose the pedal.

And then here we land in D major, the dominant.

You have a diminished chord here.

Kind of cloud in the sky.

A minor

Then we climb again from here.

Just like that, we're back to the familiar

G pedal point.

Listen for the bottom G.

Home again.

Near the end of the first half, Bach again

drifts away from G major and reaches even

deeper into the cello's bass range with

a low C. Listen to this. (5:40)

Nov 22, 2022

 

The chord is with a D. Here.

But he flips it on its head.

With a C on the bottom.

By the end of the first half Bach had pulled

us completely into D major.

He's warming our ears up for the second

half of the composition which is all about

exploring that dominant key.

At the begining of the second half of the

movement, right after the fermata which means

to hold on the note, then you have a very

improvisatory section coming up.

And this is actually I think my favorite moment

of it with this E flat.

This dissonance.

And all of that just to get to D major.

We know that we have to get back to G major

somehow.

How are we going to do it?

Now we start to kind of climb down.

Still in D major

Bach pushed us more firmly into the world

of D major with a technique called bariolage.

It's when you're making string crossings

and it's actually supposed to kind of create

this kind of feeling of disorder.

We have a constant open A string.

Which is this.

It's only one note that we're just repeating

over and over again.

And this is what causes all this mayhem, right?

All these attempts to get out of D major and

he can't do it.

Now we're in G major!

If you didn't catch that, somehing really

quite perfect happened.

Let's play it again.

You just wound up exactly where you started,

D major.

And then you have a chromatic scale up.

And you land on this high G here.

And that's when we feel this kind of ecstatic 

feeling.

Leading up to G major's big reveal, Bach

brings back that familiar pedal point from

the intro, but instead of using the G as the

bass note, he flips the chord and uses the

dominant D.

The bass note remains constant.

Even as we're going up the chromatic scale.

Listen, I'll do it slow.

And we're so happy about it that we have to

just keep kind of wandering around it.

And, going back to one.

Cellist all over the world wrestle with this

prelude and the cello suties as a whole every

single day.

We cellist, we always feel sort of unworthy 

of it.

The music is so pure, so sublime, so emotional,

so intellectual.

They must be played, and yet we feel like

we can't we can't really ever do them justice.

Nov 23, 2022 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIge2mYdTtM&list=PLKoNtxiwuGLY4iptWzLo6qQfi4QDh6AsG&index=143 

 

 

Next, 

Bach's C major prelude, deconstructed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5XJdHfPc5o