Non existant bass part in Brandenburg Concierto 3

Hello all. The string ensemble I play in recently started to wrok on Bach's brandenburg concierto no. 3. The arrangement had no bass part, only cello part - and while I know that this is the Continuo basso part, that all bass violins and violone would play, I wonder if there are some conventions I should be aware of when playing this, just to make sure I'm not a bassist happily enjoying some work to do while unknowingly committing atrocities to music.

Obviusly, I need to transpose some phrases an octave, but that would only put me in unison with the cellos - as I make sure to avoid creating any/as few as possible inverted intervals in my melody to avoid messing up the contrapuctual melodies up.

Are there any things that basses by convention did not play on, and should I care about that? Obviously the conductor holds the final judgement here, but just to get some knowledge of what I'm doing.

 

Interesting, but the arrangement we have is a re-arrangement for string quartet, so the different parts might very well be shuffled around a bit. I'm not sure how well adding a foreign element to the arrangement will affect it. I'll see what our conductor says.

 

Yes, the score I'm playing from is the Cello part, so I will do just as you said. A few places I think the violone part is silent and a few few organ points (that's the word in English, right?), but other than that, it seemed pretty much similar.

Great help by the way, thanks!

 

Thanks both of you, but as the whole ensemble plays a rearrangement for string quartet, many things are changed. I've just verified this by looking at the cello score and comparing it to the original. For example, this arrangement has one 1st violin part, one 2nd violin part, one Viola part and one cello part.

So even if I get the original score, no one else will play the original parts - allthough the original bass part is linked up above.

By the way Fergus, what's "FGS"?

 

No offence indented, but check post N° 5

That would certainly work, but be a very harsh solution. As there is a bass part (played by basses in all recordings I've heard) very similar to the Cello part, think it's a bit too harsh - considering how few Fortes there are in the part..

Flipping the idea around, I got the idea to see how being quiet on all piano parts would work.

The only place the cello and bass don't follow each other i the phrases where the cello no longer plays in unison (in the original arrangement), plus the pedal notes. I've marked these places in my score, and I'll ask what our conductor thinks on the rehearsal tomorrow.

As a little fun, among all recordings I listened to, I found this guy on youtube. Pretty fun way of presenting music, especially Bach.

 

Normally me too, the thing that makes these most interesting is having it all superimposed on each other, and in a neat fashion - doing this with scores will be much more cluttered.

Maybe I'm just not as good at reading the full score, but I feel my eyes don't suffice to cover the full height of the full score.