Gabriel’s Self-accompanied Cello

Film Score, Free Sheet Music, Intermediate Cellists
First published on Apr 7, 2024 by Seb
Last updated on May 2, 2024 by Seb

The composer relayed this origin for the piece you find here:

I love Ilse de Ziah’s rearrangement of Gabriel’s Oboe for self-accompanied cello. But it is beyond my playing ability. So I lowered the music by a fifth to G major, and wrote a Bach-style, self-accompanied version that I am able to play myself. The second half of the piece shifts to C major, to explore alternative ways to leverage G and C strings. I don’t know if the result is still “an arrangement”. Perhaps “recomposed” is a better name for what turned out.

– the arranger / recomposer

Find below sheet music with only notes. Feel free to slur notes with your own favorite phrasing. Or further revise this rearrangement. Both PNG and PDF versions are available.

Gabriel’s Self-accompanied Cello (notes only) p1
Gabriel’s Self-accompanied Cello (notes only) p2

By transposing the original down a fifth, the arrangement allows notes from the original melody to be played with the first position on two strings (A, D). It also changes the key from D major to G major. The second half shifts to C major. Either of these keys allows cello’s G and C strings to better add to the overall harmony.

If you are curious about how the recomposer approached this piece as an amateur cellist himself, check out the annotated sheets below. More advanced cellists will want to figure out their own bowings and fingerings.

Gabriel’s Self-accompanied Cello (annotated) p1
Gabriel’s Self-accompanied Cello (annotated) p2

If you plan to improve on this music, start with Musescore files which you can further edit in the free Musescore app. But since you can’t download most Musescore files on the commercial Musescore’s website unless you are a paid user, we store .mscz files on this site whenever we can, so you can freely download them here. They are saved here as .zip files because WordPress does not accept .mscz files. Just download them and unzip:

Advanced cellists should also check out Ilse de Ziah’s version, as the recomposer mentioned.