Sarabande from 5th suite J.S. Bach

[Savio]

I wonder what you all think about this? Its not exactly what I feel familiar to play, but we all play it sometimes.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AnFhNyFesmcYhONoczADRQYGzFJypA

Leif

[Slideorama]

[FOSSIL]

Very nice indeed.

Chris

[Basbasun]

Yo Yo Ma play this piece in a beautiful way, a good recording to copy.
Your playing is always good Leif, but you play with even more egg tones (in Swedish åker på tonerna, fega attacker)
that cellists do. Actually I dont like that way of start tones on either trombone or cello.

[Savio]

Thanks all!
Yes, I listen it now, it's a little peanut shape on some notes?

Leif

[timothy42b]

Gorgeous as always, Leif. I love the clean warm sound you get, rub plus core.

No cellist would play it without much more vibrato. I hear you starting to add a bit of shimmer especially on the low notes.

[imsevimse]

I wonder what you all think about this? Its not exactly what I feel familiar to play, but we all play it sometimes.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AnFhNyFesmcYhONoczADRQYGzFJypA

Leif

Good sound as usual, Leif

I think it is nice you put recordings out. When I did that I learned a lot and it often lead to practice and progress in areas I could not foresee

I know it is not very helpful to say it sounds good because then I will not contribute much to your progress, but it does sound good so I tell you anyhow, but I still think you could improve your recording, because I can hear you are much better than this.

I have no problem with this played without vibrato as you do. "No vibrato" gives a calm, confident and relaxed expression. It might not be as a modern cellist would do it but it is fine with me. You did add I slight vibrato at the end and that is nice. Vibrato was very sparse but I do think it fits the tune to play it like that, especially when played on the bass trombone.

One thing is you could play more legato and a bit more sustained. It could help the calmness of the piece, but that is style. I think this way works too, but more legato could help to get it smoother and especially if you could play the larger leaps closer, if possible.

The second thing that I think could help is also what I think would improve the most. It would really help if you were more accurate with your intonation. Especially (almost everytime) when after a leap down and you land on a note that ascends with a half step (In the first motif it is already the third and forth note) Both these notes are sharp almost every time, and when you do a large leap down then the note you land on is also often sharp. I think if you could be more accurate on those two notes then the rest of the intonation issues might be less too because you slip slightly out there and it disturbes what comes next.

Since I have only relative pitch this is compared to the intonation you have when you start. My advice would be "to play as flat as you dare" for a while, and listen for the recording and question yourself at what point it gets TOO flat. I have discovered I have a greater tolerance for sharp playing which actually means I should play as flat as I possibly dare. This is (to me) more in tune than to play with the acceptance of being to sharp. I hope you understand my point.

I'm looking forward to hear more. If I think I'm ready I will put something out to public criticism too. I just need more practice first. You are real good, Leif. What a good sound!

/Tom

[Savio]

Thanks Tom! I have to experiment a little. Stange piece of music even for Bach? I dont think I will perform it in front of public. Its kind of chords instead of a melody. Not easy to get a shape or form on the hole piece?

Leif

[paulyg]

You fell for the trap. The time signature is 3/4, not 6/8. Subdividing eighth notes is OK, but a quarter-note pulse must be felt. Listen to the Yo-Yo Ma recording. There's a new bow stroke on almost every full beat, not every eighth note. This distinction is fundamental to the characterization of this piece as a Sarabande.

Not to impugn Doug Yeo's scholarship on the matter, but if you are using his transcription, note that the phrase markings are his, not Bach's. The phrase markings in Anna Magdalena Bach's manuscript (found in most reputable cello editions so marked) are a little more helpful. Doug's phrase markings seem to be more related to breathing, than to the flow of the piece.

[imsevimse]

You fell for the trap. The time signature is 3/4, not 6/8. Subdividing eighth notes is OK, but a quarter-note pulse must be felt. Listen to the Yo-Yo Ma recording. There's a new bow stroke on almost every full beat, not every eighth note.

I think it is easy after have heard the Yo-Yoo Ma recording to criticize anything that any tromboneplayer at any level will do with this piece.

It is true he can do the things on the cello much easier than we can do on a trombone, and then he has also the advantage to play the instrument for which this piece was written.

Concerning vibrato we can hear he also uses it very sparse, just as Leif does. I could not hear any vibrato like the ones I usually hear in cello music and I don't miss that at all. We can hear he plays the C on the loose string which makes that note special when he accents it just before a leap. He also intensified his legato near the end. It gives a heavy expression with a lot of forward motion but still in tempo. He plays some very long phrases were he keep the bow in contact with the strings in a way that would be extremely hard to do on a trombone. To copy that playing on a bass trombone would demand huge lungs or great technique for circular breathing. Besides all this to compete with Yo-You Ma on a Bach Cello Suite will be a defeat every time, as he is also one of the greatest on his instrument.

We can use the recording to get ideas but must convert the piece to something that works on the bass trombone.

It is true the Cello emphases with the bow and it could be copied to some extent. We do need to breath and the pause this demands will effect what comes after. This means we have to adopt not only for breaths but also the feeling over all will be affected. We have to solve this somehow. We could play more rubato which could mask a breath or we could shorten notes to breath. If we shorten notes we have to play the note we shorten in a way it still sounds musical. I think air is the biggest challenge in this piece when intonation and bows are in place. We could play softer to have the air last longer. We could adopt the tempo to something that makes it easier too, but not too much because we want that calm and sustained feeling of this piece. All this must lead to an interpretation that is possible for us as individuals. We have to mask the limitations we have as individual tromboneplayers. The Yo-Yo Ma recording is very good to study but to do an identical copy of that version on a bass trombone would be very difficult.

/Tom

[Savio]

Yes, it's inspiring to listen cello players and we of course get some ideas. I understand young serious student's have to play this one in auditions, then it's maybe wise to listen a experienced trombone player. I will have a look at the Yeo site. Anyway, this sarabande isn't exactly easy. I like the sarabande from suite one better.

Leif

[Basbasun]

How about imageing how Georg Roberts would play the thing? I listened again, I take back what i said about egg tones, your intonation is not bad actually, I do not agre with the trap thing, you do play 6/8, sometimes you have breath where a cello does not have to. But you usually play with a more free open sound. Like G.R. You know what I mean?
Good playing!

[FOSSIL]

We are wrong to simply try and copy the playing of the piece on the cello. The trombone has it's own character, it's own aural prism through which we view this music, but we can learn massive amounts from listening to a master musician like Yo Yo Ma playing the piece on the instrument that the music was written for. He has studied and lived with this music his whole life. Rarely do we get such insights.
This piece is set for many bass trombone auditions. The reason is simple.... it is short and makes a fool out of many players who fall short on technique and/or musicianship. It makes the panel's job easy on a first round.
Musically there is no such thing as right and wrong.... there are ways of playing it on the trombone that work and ways that don't work..... all fall short of the performance that a cellist is capable of. Not all cellists are capable though.
Leif, we can talk about it when I see you.

Chris

[Savio]

Yes Chris! Looking forward to that. How George Roberts would play it I don't know. But he is known for good sound, timing and excellent musicianship. I believe everyone have to find a way? With some help...
Leif

[paulyg]

Of course nobody is going to come close to Yo-Yo Ma's facility- he has won multiple grammy awards for his recordings of the cello suites, and routinely performs all six from memory. This is a physical impossibility for trombone players.

Still, that doesn't mean we have to resign ourselves to being any less expressive than Yo-Yo Ma, even when we play these pieces on trombone. I was not suggesting that anyone attempt to imitate Ma's performance verbatim, capturing every subtlety, ect... just that the Leif listen specifically to Yo-Yo's pulse as an illustration of the change I was suggesting.

We have a certain advantage over cello players when it comes to interpreting these pieces- we have to breathe. A trombonist can use the presence and absence of breaths to accumulate and discharge momentum, and liven up the music. This is not intuitive to cello players the same way it is to us, and what sets the truly exceptional recordings and performances of these suites (on cello) apart from the average ones is how the soloist forces the cello to breath- to imitate an organism, and to come to life.

Bottom line, with the cello suites we must pick our battles. Of course the double-stops are a conundrum- most must be arpeggiated, though there are none in this Sarabande. The trills are often in awkward registers, and must either be accomplished with the valve, mordent-ized, practiced disproportionately, or omitted. One thing that is NOT necessary (most of the time) is to play with a metronomic pulse. Beats must be placed with intention, but not necessarily inorganically. Bach died some 25 years prior to the invention of the metronome.

This brings me to my point, which I inelegantly stated in my original reply. This piece has a slow, lamenting, almost plodding feel. A quarter note pulse communicates this at a variety of tempos, and clues the listener in to the fact that the piece is in 3/4. Accenting each eighth note, or playing them uniformly, makes the piece feel hurried. It's taking two smaller, light steps in the place of one large, heavy step.

[hyperbolica]

I have always played this a bit faster than either Savio or YoYo, probably because it's soooo hard to get much expression in the notes at the slow speed without chopping it up with a lot of breaths. The cello of course doesn't have to worry about breathing in the same way, so they can get big full notes at the ends of phrases without turning blue and falling over. So the compromise I make with this one is to let the moving notes move a little more, and settle on the held notes. This gives it a more rubato feel that may not be present in the definitive performances, but to me that concession makes performance on the trombone beautiful, expressive, and within the bounds of the instrument.

Also, my introduction to this some 45 years ago was using the LaFosse edition, which is transcribed a 4th higher than the original, specifically to make it more plyable on the tenor trombone.

[Basbasun]

Right so, the piece is in 3/4, actually it is 50 years ago I worked with this piece with my teacher.

[LeTromboniste]

Re : tempo and phrasing

It's a Sarabande, which is a dance. The music of a sarabande is always melancholic but the dance is not static and involves quite a lot of motion and advanced dancers will include jumps, which are impossible at the glacially slow tempo we tend to associate with this particular piece. That it was not written to actually accompany dancers is irrelevant, it's still a dance genre and was meant to be recognisible as such by audiences who were used to hearing, seeing and dancing that dance. I suspect that Bach's sarabandes would probably have been played quite a bit faster in his days than anyone dares to do now, and part of the reason people play them this slow is that in a post-romantic world we want to think that every piece (especially those of the great-masters-turned-quasi-gods) must have gravitas and a deep meaning and so any slow movement needs to be really, really slow and melancholy needs to be turned into an almost caricatural and Wertherian despair. So I strongly suggest watching videos of sarabandes (and of every dance genre you might come accross in your playing) to get a feel of what tempo the steps of the dance need and what is too slow or too fast for the steps.

That it's a dance genre can also inform phrasing. Specifically, sarabandes have a certain iambic feel to the basic steps which is often imitated in the music. Many people will instruct to add a stress to every beat 2 in the Bach, which is not in itself incorrect but there's a danger of overdoing it, and actually I think a better way to see it is to completely take any stress away from beat 3 so that beat 3 is always a release from beat 2, without needing an added accent on beat 2. You can then subvert that hierarchy at the end to create forward momentum and intensity when the music becomes more restless by not releasing the tension on 3rd beats and instead channelling it forward.

[Bach5G]

Sarabande:

https://binged.it/2KxE65R

[imsevimse]

Re : tempo and phrasing

It's a Sarabande, which is a dance. The music of a sarabande is always melancholic but the dance is not particularly calm and involves quite a lot of motion and advanced dancers will include jumps, which are impossible at the glacially slow tempo we tend to associate with this particular piece. That it was not written to actually accompany dancers is irrelevant, it's still a dance genre and was meant to be recognisible as such by audiences who were used to hearing, seeing and dancing that dance. I suspect that Bach's sarabandes would probably have been played quite a bit faster in his days than anyone dares to do now, and part of the reason people play them this slow is that in a post-romantic world we want to think that every piece (especially those of the great-masters-turned-quasi-gods) must have gravitas and a deep meaning and so any slow movement needs to be really, really slow and melancholy needs to be turned into an almost caricatural and Wertherian despair. So I strongly suggest watching videos of sarabandes (and of every dance genre you might come accross in your playing) to get a feel of what tempo the steps of the dance need and what is too slow or too fast for the steps.

That it's a dance genre can also inform phrasing. Specifically, sarabandes have a certain iambic feel to the basic steps which is often imitated in the music. Many people will instruct to add a stress to every beat 2 in the Bach, which is not in itself incorrect but there's a danger of overdoing it, and actually I think a better way to see it is to completely take any stress away from beat 3 so that beat 3 is always a release from beat 2, without needing an added accent on beat 2. You can then subvert that hierarchy at the end to create forward momentum and intensity when the music becomes more restless by not releasing the tension on 3rd beats and instead channelling it forward.

Thank you for an interesting post. I remember now I have read something about the sarabande was banned in some courts because of its obscene dance moves. Anyway I think I will checkout the dance steps and the description of the sarabande as it could help to interpret the piece. I have played the Cello suites since I began to study trombone at the academy in 1984. I never stopped to play them. Actually after have read this thread I played the four I have yesterday. I have the R. Katarzynski edition from 1977 adopted for tenor which I think makes it easier. Somewhere I have all six in an edition for Cello, but I think the R. Katarzinski selection is enough to keep me busy many years.

Edit: After have read some articles about the sarabande at various sources on Internet it seams there have been different tempos of the sarabande. The old fast sarabande with obscene moves that was indeed banned in some countries and then a strict instrumental sarabande in slow tempo in Bachs time and later the faster version returned. Naturally like anything found on Internet there are no reference to ghe original sources of information. It is therefore problematic to find proof of any information behind the articles but I do think it makes sense to have slowed down the sarabande to try to change the dance to make it legal, especially in those countries where it was banned. The fact it was strictly instrumental makes a difference, because it is not bound by any dance steps. That's a theory. The question is what influences Bach to compose the sarabande. What dances did Bach see? He was a religious man and I suspect he might not like quick obscene dance steps and vulgar moves to his music. I can absolutely have no clue about his personality but this is my belief. I think the metric feeling of a sarabande you describe help to interpret the piece, and to play slightly faster too, but to play as too fit a fast dance with jumps would totally change the character of the piece.
To me: If I imagine this Bach sarabande in a fast tempo it will be a real crazy piece with big leaps and corny hurried anxious sighs - a very burlesque piece - but if played slow it becomes a very noble and honourable piece. My thoughts

In my book this sarabande is a part of the 4:th suite not the 5:th?

/Tom

[Basbasun]

Like much music with "dance titles" this music has ben played with different tempos, this piece can be played in any tempo that makes it work and sound good. Unless there dancing the musician can make the choise. If there is dancing, there is the dancers choise.

[LeTromboniste]

Just a precision : I never said it's supposed to be fast. The French style sarabande of Bach's time is not a fast dance at all. It is most definitely slow (jumps exist in slow dances, but they stop being possible if it's *too* slow) - look and listen to Bach5G's link, that's really not something I'd describe as fast music, just not nearly as glacially slow as we tend to take this particular piece. My point was, it wouldn't have occurred to musicians in Bach's time to play a sarabande in 6. Yes, it's instrumental, yes they could play it at the tempo they want, but it's unlikely they would have chosen a tempo that is so far from the numerous other sarabandes they played every week. I'm all for playing it slightly slower than would be ideal for dancers if it makes musical sense, but it should remain identifiable as a sarabande. Why would Bach and others in his time have composed dance suites if the movements were not meant to at least resemble dance music? Sarabande, Allemande, Gigue, etc are terms that have no meaning to most people today, but in Bach's day any of those words would be immediately recognizable and associated with a clear mental image for any noble or bourgeois.

[timothy42b]

If it is a dance, that implies some limitation on rubato. It need not be metronomic, but it should be danceable or at least suggest it. I hear cello players (and trombone players) using extreme amounts of rubato, and it sounds wrong to my ears. It is as if they are free to do anything they want with time.

[Bach5G]

There’s a bit of rubato in the dance example though.

[imsevimse]

If it is a dance, that implies some limitation on rubato. It need not be metronomic, but it should be danceable or at least suggest it. I hear cello players (and trombone players) using extreme amounts of rubato, and it sounds wrong to my ears. It is as if they are free to do anything they want with time.

There are only two alternatives with tempo. Either strict in tempo or rubato. Rubato will give more time to breath. Strict tempo less time to breath.

In some places it is very easy to find time to breath because it fits the music to shorten notes, and it would be unmusical not to shorten them. The problem is when the breathing breaks and destroys what's natural for the music or how we want to interpret the music. That's where we have to be creative and come up with compromises. I think in this demanding music such compromises are nessecary for even the best players in the world. They have to use all their musicality to do those compromises musical as they are not natural. They are only the next best. They who are masters of circular breathing have another tool in the box, but most have not. To choose the next best choice is because the best choice has been evaluated to be physically or technically impossible.

I think the compromises that have to be there is why there are very few trombone players who play this music in public.

/Tom

[timothy42b]

If it is a dance, that implies some limitation on rubato. It need not be metronomic, but it should be danceable or at least suggest it. I hear cello players (and trombone players) using extreme amounts of rubato, and it sounds wrong to my ears. It is as if they are free to do anything they want with time.

There are only two alternatives with tempo. Either strict in tempo or rubato. Rubato will give more time to breath. Strict tempo less time to breath.


/Tom

But I hope we don't choose rubato just to breathe! But with an eye to expression.

I hear keyboard players use rubato to get through the technical parts sometimes.

[LeTromboniste]

There are only two alternatives with tempo. Either strict in tempo or rubato. Rubato will give more time to breath. Strict tempo less time to breath.

Mmh, not sure I agree with this statement. You can go in and out of a rubato feel, for instance. Also rubato can happen within beats of groups of beats without changing the position in time of structural points, in which case you're both in tempo and using rubato at the same time. In tempo doesn't have to mean mechanical.

There’s a bit of rubato in the dance example though.

The video you linked is really a great example of what we should strive for. The beats are actually fairly strictly in time - certainly in time enough to dance to, but the divisions of the beats are where most of the rubato happens (notes inégales as the French called it - uneven notes). Of course this is French music where this is used the most and to the furthest extreme, so for Bach we should tone it down a notch from there, but *some* unevenness can always be used to good effect in non-French baroque music. Plus the sarabande of Bach's time is essentially a French dance.

[imsevimse]

There are only two alternatives with tempo. Either strict in tempo or rubato. Rubato will give more time to breath. Strict tempo less time to breath.

Mmh, not sure I agree with this statement. You can go in and out of a rubato feel, for instance. Also rubato can happen within beats of groups of beats without changing the position in time of structural points, in which case you're both in tempo and using rubato at the same time. In tempo doesn't have to mean mechanical.

Yes I agree with you, but that is really what I think of as rubato. If you do a ritardando and accelerando within a beat or a measure that is also a kind of rubato at least as I use the word. If you go in and out of strict tempo is also rubato.

Let me refrase to make my point clear: There is music that is strict in tempo (metric) and there is music that is not. My point is we should use this feature (non strict, non metric abilities) to our advantage so we give ourselves time to breath.

/Tom

[norbie2018]

I really enjoy your sound and the music you make - they are both very mature to my ears. Please keep doing what you're doing!

[Savio]

Thanks! we all try our best!
I read in wiki that the sarabande comes from south america, spanish dance with castanets. When it come to Spain it was banned. When it come to Italy and France it become a slow dance.

"J.S. Bach sometimes gave the sarabande a privileged place in his music, even outside the context of dance suites"

Does this mean he didnt think of it as a dance?

Anyway, no matter how we do it, it should have a musical meaning. So if it is either more "dance" or "rubato" style it should have a kind of musical point for the listener to catch?
For us trombonists that have to breath, its maybe important to make it flow? Actually Yo Yo Ma make some kind of breathing.

Any one tried the Sarabande from the last suite? My teacher did it but I forgot how she did it.

Leif

[Basbasun]

Good post Savio!

[imsevimse]

There are only two alternatives with tempo. Either strict in tempo or rubato. Rubato will give more time to breath. Strict tempo less time to breath.


/Tom

But I hope we don't choose rubato just to breathe! But with an eye to expression.

I hear keyboard players use rubato to get through the technical parts sometimes.

Well that is exactly what I have tried to explain. One of the difficulties with this music is our physical limits. We have to do it musical but the version we settle on may be the next best choice because the most desired is not possible. There are myriads of variations of a phrase of this sarabande. A few of them will pass our critical eye. If we consider other difficulties in the book there are several phrases where our first and second choice of a phrase may be impossible because our limitations. In worst case the third option may be the best we can do. It might be to make a rubato to be able to take a breath. Then we have to do that rubato musical. Im talking on deliberate phrasing with legatos, crescendos, long lines of notes, ritardandos, fermatas, accelerandos and yet another ritardando and some long lines followed by yet another fermata. I'm thinking of some of the other pieces in this book. On a cello these long lines are possible, but not for us. We have to really plan how to play this. The markings for breathing in my edition is crap. There are to many of them. We have to breath but the one who transcribed this for trombone heard the music different from me.. Tempo is another limit. I think most musicians can feel when a tempo is right or wrong for the music they are playing. There is a too fast tempo and a too slow tempo. It has nothing to do with technical skills. Outside that interval the piece loose its character and becomes a satire or becomes uninteresting. Bach is in this sense good because his music often sound good in many tempos to my ears.

/Tom

[conn88Hagmann]

Hey guys, sone help!

I’m preparing the sarabande for an audition, the fake LaFosse version. Wrong notes. . Do you change them or play what LaFosse wrote. I’m taking about 5 before the end.

Sorry if that’s already on here!

[Neo Bri]

I'd either get an edition for cello (IMPSLP). Or go to Doug Yeo's site and see his performance edition of his suggested phrasing, breathing, etc.

[conn88Hagmann]

I have a cello version, it’s so much better in the right key!

[CalgaryTbone]

If it's for an audition, play the one they specified. If they didn't specify, then I would definitely think that they expect to hear it in the original key. Some people do prefer the LaFosse edition versions for tenor trombone, but I would always assume that they would include that info when they list the repertoire. If it is just something you want to play and not a requirement, then play the version you sound better on, and you could change the last bar to match the original if you prefer.

Jim Scott

[conn88Hagmann]

Sorry maybe I wasn’t clear. . It is definitely the Lafosse key that has to be performed, but 5 bars from the end LaFosse has written 4 wrong notes . . . . BbFBbA instead of the correct notes CGCB. BUT. . I’ve never seen anyone ever pick it up. And the published versions are all wring time bachs version even though transposed. . . . .

[mbarbier]

Sorry maybe I wasn’t clear. . It is definitely the Lafosse key that has to be performed, but 5 bars from the end LaFosse has written 4 wrong notes . . . . BbFBbA instead of the correct notes CGCB. BUT. . I’ve never seen anyone ever pick it up. And the published versions are all wring time bachs version even though transposed. . . . .

I'm wondering the same thing- I have two audition lists I'm working on that specify the he Lafosse 5th Suite Sarabande, and the provided pdf definitely has a misprint in that bar. I'm planning to play the correct notes and read it as a typo...maybe a bad idea but it seems odd to play wrong notes given they must be a typo.

[2bobone]

There is no doubt that the Bach cello suites are subjected to a compromise when played on a wind instrument. The bow on a stringed instrument is the source of infinite phrasing ---- that of a wind instrument is limited. Whether played on strings or wind instruments, there is one very important aspect to a successful interpretation of these magnificent suites. They are a "conversation" between two points of view and the statement and response are very obvious if one cares to pay attention. The time signature is merely a suggested structural component. Donald Knaub's interpretation on his CD "RETREAD" of the Sarabande from the 5th Suite is an excellent example of which I speak. It is worth giving it a listen !