Musical Notes and Thoughts

As I get back to practicing double-bass post church move, I’m starting to think about what pieces to add to the repertoire I’ve been developing. Do I arrange a couple more Faure songs, finally learn the Celtic Sonata I wrote some time back, or something else entirely?

Today I stumbled upon something seemingly by accident (in God there are no accidents), something I didn’t know even existed and hadn’t even thought about as an option: an (old) arrangement of the Aria from Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras #5 for viola or cello and piano (the piece was originally for soprano and eight cellos). Villa-Lobos wrote nine works in his Bachianas series. He loved Bach’s music and took some of Bach’s tenets and adapted them as he thought best to express the music of Brazil.

The aria from #5 is Villa-Lobos’s most famous work, and I know of few melodies as beautiful and expressive as that aria. The piece has long been a favorite of mine, and should adapt quite nicely for solo double-bass, as it is an aria, and not full of viola/cello pyrotechnics. Interestingly, way back in my college days, we did two movements of #1, originally for an orchestra of cellos, on 8 double-basses. I was playing one of the top parts, and that was a massive technical challenge!

It will take some time for the piece to arrive–it is from obscure old inventory, but I am looking forward to adapting it to double-bass, creating a MIDI accompaniment file, learning, and then performing the piece (that will be at least a few months out).