Baroque, Free Sheet Music, Intermediate Cellists
First published on Oct 10, 2024 by Seb
Last updated on Oct 12, 2024 by Seb
When Domenico Gabrielli passed away in 1690, JS Bach was merely 5-year old. While Bach’s unaccompanied cello music is well-recognized today, Gabrielli’s seven ricercari for unaccompanied cello remain largely unknown, even though they were the first published work of this genre.
Here we have Guy Fishman’s interpretation of the 7th ricercar. A ricercar is a type of instrumental composition from the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. The word means “to search out”. It often served as a prelude, to establish the key or mode for a subsequent piece. Nowadays Gabrielli’s ricercari are commonly played with a Baroque cello setup with gut strings.
Some cellists play this music with a Baroque scordatura where the first string is tuned not to A, but a whole step down to G. See the CGDG scordatura notation shown in below sheet music, edited by Allen Maracle, and made available at IMSLP. The notehead written as “middle C”, at bar 4, is actually a B-flat. If you tune the first string to G, and then try to play a middle C using normal fingering, you will end up making a B-flat sound.
Here is Emily Davidson playing the 1st ricercar, with this CGDG scordatura.
When written using normal scoring with a CGDA tuning, the sheet music looks like the following. This is edited by Alberto Gomez, made available at IMSLP.
Here is Guillermo Turina playing the 1st ricercar with today’s CGDA tuning.
One often hears the “rule” that “a leap in one direction should be followed by stepwise moves in the other direction”. Here is a clear exception that sounds greats despite so-called rules.
Here is Annie Jacobs-Perkins playing the 5th ricercar.
Here is Elisabeth Reed playing the 6th ricercar.
There is a treatise on the 1st ricercar at cello.org, penned by Brian Carter, complete with annotated score and recording. It’s titled: An Examination of Sources as they Pertain to Domenico Gabrielli’s First Ricercar for Violoncello Solo.
This YouTube playlist includes all 7 ricercari, performed by Julius Berger.