Bach Cello Suites Harmonic Analysis

[Music_for_life]

How can we as bas players use this material applying harmony to know how the music was composed???
I want to know the baroque forms of music and composing using this suites... From a bassist perspective we lack of books that deal with this type of information...And instead we use this books as patterns within a tonality...What can you recommend???

[sammyp]

Right! ....you need to learn classical style analysis! Right now i have no books to recommend cause i learned this in university 15 years ago ...but if you google Classical
Music Harmonic Analysis you should find a wealth of info.

[Rev J]

From what I recall of the first cello suite the opening line is a G Major arpeggio, followed by a CMaj/G to a Dmaj/A. I-IV-V baby nicely voice led. Probably not coincidentally "Classical Thump" by Victor Wooten follows the same progression with the same voicings.

Stay Brown,
Rev J

[BassChuck]

Get these books. Everything you'll ever want to know about the Cello Suites.

http://www.amazon.com/Bachs-Cello-Su...uites+analysis

[Bainbridge]

When I teach the Prelude of the first Cello Suite, I point out things like the movement from tonic to dominant back to tonic, and the accompanying analysis of the register starting from very wide and open arepeggios, to very narrow scales, to open arpeggios again. The reason I do this is because Bach did this: he establishes a baseline (tonic, arpeggios), creates tension (dominant, scales, culminating in a chromatic scale), and releases that tension (tonic, arpeggios). After I show my students that framework, we go in and look at what's happening on a microscopic level (usually for the benefit of their reading and analysis skills). What you need to do as a musician is to see the big picture (the tonic-dominant-tonic scheme, or open-narrow-open, or calm-tense-calm, or ABA, or whatever). Then, you can start looking at the nuances that make up the details of that story. Patterns like the ones I discussed above are omnipresent in Western music, and even in non-Western music to certain extents; you would do well to learn how to spot them.

[BassChuck]

Originally Posted by Bainbridge

When I teach the Prelude of the first Cello Suite, I point out things like the movement from tonic to dominant back to tonic, and the accompanying analysis of the register starting from very wide and open arepeggios, to very narrow scales, to open arpeggios again. The reason I do this is because Bach did this: he establishes a baseline (tonic, arpeggios), creates tension (dominant, scales, culminating in a chromatic scale), and releases that tension (tonic, arpeggios). After I show my students that framework, we go in and look at what's happening on a microscopic level (usually for the benefit of their reading and analysis skills). What you need to do as a musician is to see the big picture (the tonic-dominant-tonic scheme, or open-narrow-open, or calm-tense-calm, or ABA, or whatever). Then, you can start looking at the nuances that make up the details of that story. Patterns like the ones I discussed above are omnipresent in Western music, and even in non-Western music to certain extents; you would do well to learn how to spot them.

A very musical approach to theory. Are you aware of Schenker Analysis? He has a whole system for this kind of thinking.

[Bainbridge]

I'm vaguely aware of Schenkerian analysis, but I know little of it beyond this thing:



Maybe I should look into Schenker a bit more.