Selected Movements for Solo Trumpet transcribed from the Cello Suites E-Book

Johann Sebastian Bach

• Herausgeber: Faber Music Limited
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 61

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The full eBook version of Selected Movements for Solo Trumpet transcribed from the Cello Suites in fixed-layout format. Selected Movements for Solo Trumpet transcribed from the Cello Suites presents a carefully curated selection of twelve movements from Bach's Six Suites for Solo Violoncello (BWV 1007-1012), expertly transcribed for B flat trumpet by Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, who translates Bach's musical language in a compelling idiom for the instrument. Selected to be suitable for intermediate to advanced level players, this edition also includes a detailed Preface, Critical Commentary and Further Reading. This selection offers trumpet players an accessible entry point into Bach's iconic Cello Suites, featuring pieces that can be approached with relative ease by those developing technical proficiency and musical assurance. Selected Movements for Solo Trumpet transcribed from the Cello Suites bietet eine sorgfältig zusammengestellte Auswahl von zwölf Sätzen aus Bachs Sechs Suiten für Violoncello (BWV 1007-1012), meisterhaft für B-Trompete transkribiert von Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, der Bachs musikalische Sprache in ein ausdrucksstarkes Idiom für das Instrument überträgt. Die Ausgabe richtet sich an Spielerinnen und Spieler mittleren bis fortgeschrittenen Niveaus und enthält zudem ein umfassendes Vorwort, einen Kritischen Kommentar und weiterführende Literaturhinweise. Diese Auswahl eröffnet Trompeterinnen und Trompetern einen guten Einstieg in Bachs berühmte Cellosuiten - mit Sätzen, die sich ausnahmslos gut bewältigen lassen und den Weg zu einer größeren technischen Versiertheit und musikalischen Ausdruckskraft ebnen.

Leseprobe

A recording of the Trumpet Suites performed by

Jonathan Freeman-Attwood is available on Deux-Elles.

This edition © 2025 by Faber Music Ltd

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Jonathan Freeman-Attwood

is Principal of the Royal Academy of Music in London. He is

an award-winning record producer, trumpet player, researcher, writer and broadcaster, and

holds a Professorship at the University of London. He was appointed CBE in the New Year’s

Honours List in 2018.

Jonathan Freeman-Attwood

ist Direktor der Royal Academy of Music in London. Er

ist ein preisgekrönter Produzent von Tonaufnahmen, Trompeter, Forscher, Autor und

Rundfunksprecher und hat eine Professur an der University of London inne. 2018 ist er auf

der New Year’s Honours List zum CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire)

ernannt worden.

Contents

Preface

1.

Introduction

.....................................................................................................................................

IV

2.

The music

........................................................................................................................................

IV

3.

Possibilities within constraints

...........................................................................................................

VI

4.

Special considerations for performance

..............................................................................................

VII

Vorwort

1.

Einführung

...................................................................................................................................

VIII

2.

Die Musik

.....................................................................................................................................

VIII

3.

Möglichkeiten im Rahmen der Beschränkungen

.................................................................................

X

4.

Besonderheiten der Ausführung

........................................................................................................

XI

Suite No. 1

: Prelude, Courante, Sarabande, Minuets I and II, BWV 1007

.........................................................

2

Suite No. 5

: Courante, Gigue, BWV 1011

......................................................................................................

8

Suite No. 3

: Courante, Bourrées I and II, BWV 1009

....................................................................................

10

Suite No. 2

: Sarabande, BWV 1008

..............................................................................................................

12

Suite No. 6

: Sarabande, Gavottes I and II, BWV 1012

..................................................................................

13

Suite No. 4

: Gigue, BWV 1010

....................................................................................................................

16

Critical Commentary

..................................................................................................................................

18

Further Reading

.........................................................................................................................................

20

Edition Peters 20030

IV

1. Introduction

Over the last few decades, Bach’s Cello Suites – in part or in toto

– have been transcribed for numerous instruments, including

the trumpet. The prevailing ambition in the majority of cases

is to make the suites technically playable in each context. The

most sophisticated of these editions have also helped musicians

– violinists, violists, saxophonists and so on – move beyond the

mechanical execution of each work, towards forging compelling

artistic interpretations. The trumpet is an instrument that offers

many possibilities, and yet its cultural heritage has not always

allowed players to pursue their creative ideas with the same

confidence as string players, whose training usually takes on the

language and idiom of these pieces from the outset. My aim in

this edition has been to open up new ways for trumpet players to

meet this exceptional and distinctive repertoire.

At the heart of this edition is the adaptation of Bach’s music to

suit the particular characteristics of the trumpet. Many decisions

derive from trying to identify the compositional priorities and

broader stylistic proclivities in each movement of the suites.

I have provided editorial suggestions in matters of articulation,

tempi and so on, but no prescriptive phrase or dynamic markings.

The primary goal is to give performers the means to make their

own discoveries.

To achieve this, I have examined the five main sources dating

from c. 1730 to the 1820s. Much of this work may seem surplus

to requirements, but by exploring the alternative possibilities

present in these sources – from copies by Johann Peter Kellner

and Anna Magdalena Bach to the first edition published in Paris

in 1824 – we can bring instrument and music closer together.

Only when this process had been exhausted did I put forward

my own editorial ideas to create the most idiomatic text for the

trumpet.

For this volume, I have selected twelve movements from the

Six Suites that can be negotiated with relative ease by players

moving towards ever-greater technical proficiency and musical

confidence. The complete Trumpet Suites are available in Edition

Peters 20029 and players can graduate to the more demanding

movements found there – especially preludes and allemandes

where the challenges generally require greater technical command

and stamina than the other movements.

This collection includes three of the most familiar dance pairs (in

major keys), and three sarabandes and courantes which present

variations in style and mood, and therefore different musical

possibilities for the performer. A pair of energetic gigues are

chosen to capture the vitality of articulation which can sound so

effective on the trumpet. No collection could deny the famous

Prelude from Suite No. 1 as an ideal opener. On first inspection,

it looks forbidding but with judicious breathing and shaping,

the player soon discovers strategies to make viable this seminal

movement.

Given that the most formative trumpet learning is done almost

exclusively on the B

b

trumpet, it was considered that the

additional C-trumpet part offered in the complete edition would

be largely redundant in this volume.

On both the complete adaption of the cello suites and this selection

of movements, I have been fortunate to draw on the friendship

and guidance of Professor Timothy Jones and Professor Laurence

Preface

Dreyfus, as well as significant encouragement from Rachel

Podger, John Wallace and Mats Lidström. Having found that

vacillation lies at the heart of the process, I am deeply grateful

to Stuart Garden for his endless patience and skill in setting my

textual wishes, re-spelling transpositions, altering figuration and

articulation markings, and uncomplainingly unscrambling these

when needed. A number of eminent artists have played through

my edition – Mark David, Jeroen Berwaerts, Jasmin Ghera and

Alison Balsom – and their comments and suggestions have been

invaluable.

Near the end of the project, I corresponded with the distinguished

lutenist, Hopkinson Smith, whose inspiring transcriptions and

performances allowed me to think freely about interpretative

options – both on the page and in the studio. Alongside my

gratitude to him for his guidance, he also sent general observation

on Bach which rings as true as any I know: ‘He so often seems to

think beyond the instrument. Since his music is so often conceived

on an abstract plane, I often say to myself, “What would Bach

have done with this or that instrument?” Or, to put it in another

way, “How can one best bring the music to life with the means

that your instrument has?” This is, for me, the challenge.’

I owe an enormous debt to Lucía Camacho Acevedo for her

perceptive and expert critical observations during the editing of

the Preface and Critical Commentary. My wife, Henrietta, has

lovingly suffered the various stages of my own experimental

playing through the score as the music gradually found a new

home on an unfamiliar instrument.

2. The music

His melodies were strange, but always varied, rich in invention,

and resembling those of no other composer.

1

Throughout his life, Bach assembled collections of what Christoph

Wolff describes as ‘methodically organised works of exemplary

status […] as paradigms of his musical art’.

2

These anthologies

are often distinctive for their scrupulous presentation, and

include the

Orgelbüchlein

, the two ground-breaking volumes of

The Well-Tempered Clavier

, his chorale cantata cycle, sets of masses,

passions, oratorios, instrumental suites, sonatas, partitas and

concertos, and

The Art of Fugue

. Bach’s clear motivation was to

signpost what he considered his best work. With half a glance to

posterity, it was the gathering of a substantial corpus of his finest

compositional achievements that most preoccupied him. For all

his celebrated virtuosity as a keyboard player and brilliance as a