Bach's Brandenburg 4: Tutorial | Team Recorder
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- čas přidán 3. 07. 2024
- Bach's 4th Brandenburg Concerto is one of THE BEST - here's how to play it! We get into everything from that pesky high F# to.. what on earth is an echo flute??
Get the recorder music here: team-recorder.myshopify.com/p...
//// TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro
00:37 Performance excerpt
01:37 Is it really for recorder?
04:12 That opening though!
06:49 Why the long notes are so IMPORTANT
07:55 High F#s… help
10:55 Ooh, rhythm
12:02 Remember the other musicians!
/// LINKS
Voices of Music, video: • Bach: Brandenburg Conc...
Voices of Music, Echo Flutes: voicesofmusic.org/BB4Notes.pdf
Article/sources on echo flute ‘Controversy’: www.gardane.info/immagini_link...
Philippe Bolton, historical fingering charts: www.flute-a-bec.com/tablhisto...
/// INSTRUMENTS
In this video I play on :
a 415Hz alto in F by Joachim Rohmer
(yep, people with perfect pitch will notice I’m a semitone lower than the musical examples are notated, sorry)
//////
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Bach for wind instruments: you're spot on! He was an ORGANIST (and other keyboard and strings). He didn't know about breathing.
I had the same thought! In the BWV 1005 solo violin sonata, there is a fugue as the 2nd movement, as there is in his other violin sonatas. The fugue plays out in 4 voices all on one violin and then he inverts the theme halfway through the piece and starts a whole new fugue from then on. I played the Fugue from the BWV 1001 solo sonata for a competition in high school and I was in pure misery from all the awkward finger twisty chords and overdone 4-note chords on ONE VIOLIN. I arrived at the thought that yes, four-voice fugues are a piece of cake for Bach ON A KEYBOARD but pure nightmare fuel on the violin.
"He was an ORGANIST ... He didn't know about breathing." Such STUPID nonsense!
1) You don't have to be wind player to understand that wind players have to breathe.
2) Composers routinely write for instruments they don't play.
3) As a boy, Bach received a scholarship to attend the prestigious St. Michael's Latin school -- as a singer. As a singer, he surely knew something about breathing.
@@ajmaltaujoo4277 Bach was also a violinist.
Only looking at this... makes me all giddy and cheerful. What a delight ms Jeffry is. Thanks.
Hello Ms Jeffery,
I wanted to say thank you for your content. I was actually directed to your channel while doing some research on sheet music for the Brandenburg Concertos.
I am a piano player, but have been trying to find a more portable instrument to take with me when I travel. I bought a recorder 2 weeks ago after watching some of your videos. Learning is going a lot easier than expected. I did only just get a good tone out of the Alto Ecodear from Yamaha. Thank you for the recommendation. I cannot wait to get into more advanced repetoir.
Thank you again!!
My favorite Brandenburg, and the first “hard” piece I attempted. I started with the second movement, and got pretty good at the third movement, but the first defeated me. I will go back and extend my arpeggios and try again. I really want to make it work!
Thanks for the f# trick :) I love to play this concerto along with Gerubach's scrolling video, and I frequently missed that high f# note... Sometimes when I went working with collegues (I frequently work on pipe organs), I prefer practising the recorder while the others just drinking a beer. Once, when I was just having fun with my phone (Gerubach scrolling score, this concerto), my semi-drunken collegue came, and just froze hearing I'm able to play that flute part on a recorder :D
Bach had a friend who was a virtuoso flauto traverso player. His works for traverse flute are dreafully difficult. I bought a 1960s recording with David Munro. In concert pitch of course.
About Bach not caring about the practicalities of recorder playing (the F#): he is also notorious for not caring about the voice.
Singers need to specialise to be able to sing Bach because he often uses the voice as a common instrument (without the limitations that the human voice usually has in comparison) making their parts incredibly ornamented and without any pause for natural, correct breathing.
This isn't true for Vivaldi, Handel and Rossini who composed intricate pieces for opera stars and had to know exactly what the singers could sing comfortably because those stars would roast them alive otherwise.
And sometimes the intervals can sound «strange»...
I think it's not uncommon for composers who are themselves KEYBOARD players to be less aware of breathing because, simply, that's not an issue on any keyboard instrument. Also, certain repeated intervalic jumps are easy on the keyboard- because you're going back and forth between- say- the thumb and the 4th or 5th finger. If you attempt this with the voice or on a wind instrument it's really awkward. Would you agree?
@@jeffreydershin5763 On the one hand it is very possible, on the other Bach had tons of experience in composing for several instruments. I don't really know what to think.
One thing I know for sure, though.
Accompanists, especially those who work with singers, need a lot of specific training even if they are accomplished pianists already.
I have a friend who is a perfectly competent but not outstanding solo pianist, but she excels as an accompanist because she has tons of experience and she know as if by instinct how to second us.
She knows her job so well that, beside rehearsing roles with professionals singers, she is able to guide the less experienced ones and even teach them the part if needed. With other pianists I need to be constantly on edge because they might do their thing without paying attention while she always keeps an eye on us to compensate for hesitations or mistakes.
So interesting, thanks for this reply! I definitely notice compositions by wind-playing composers tend to be more idiomatic than by string or keyboard players. And to be clear, I'm not Bach-hating - if someone can take a bit of stick, it's him, ;)
@@Team_Recorder Please forgive my going completely off topic,, but I was looking for a recent video to ask you a question, and accidentally came upon this video, which seems recent; real time, almost. Anyway, my question/suggestiion is simply, 'Have you ever considered writing your own tutoring book, and perhaps offering it in your online shop. The reason that I would buy one is simply a matter of organizationn: I've enjoyed watching tons of your videos, very well done and instructive indeed, but on occasion I'll be wondering about a specific bit of info, and the question becomes, 'Okay, I recall her mentioning this, but in which video?'
So, just a modest suggestion from the cheap seats in the colonies (Canada). And thank you so much, your videos have consistently both instructed and delighted me.
Thank you for your willingness to teach
Such amazing explanations! 😊
I adore this concerto !
Thank you for this great video!
Wonderful video! Thanks so much!
Wow!!!! Magnificent execution. Very good!
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
❤❤❤
You are delightful 😊
Nowhere to breathe, nowhere to hide in this piece. Thank you for your suggestions. So many Bach pieces have nowhere to breathe, including pieces adapted from those for strings.
Thanks for the video. About the flauti di eco, in the later version of 1738 in f, for cembalo concertato instead of violin, it say's "...due flauti a bec".
Really helpful and informative - thank you!
You might be interested to know that I recorded all Shakespeare's Sonnets, as a project during the lockdowns, and I discovered that Shakespeare also doesn't care about having to breathe in a way that feels very like playing Bach 😮💨
😵 Wonderful! 😄👏🏻
Love how you point out about Bach not caring about flautists needing to breathe, reminds me of the Strauss oboe concerto which similarly has nowhere to breathe...
Great tips, helped immediately on those arpegs!
The fact that the same recorder parts in the harpsichord concerto version are in F seems to support the G-alto idea. Also it was composed at Weimar where pitch was A465 (for cantatas) so A465 F-recorders (equals A415 G-altos) with A415 orchestra (pitch at Leipzig where he moved) was perhaps intended. This is a nice theory to explain why the recorder part is unplayable on normal altos except by superstars like Sarah. :)
Note Bach is known to have been an excellent singer, and all his vocal works are "difficult, but doable" (Peter Kooij, interview). You can also argue that the fact that all the f#'s (in his entire oeuvre) can be played by slurring from the previous note without resorting to bell hole closing shows Bach's understanding of this fine detail of recorder technique. He could always ask his good friend Telemann who was an excellent recorder player himself.
So many helpful tips! This may be your best tutorial yet.
Aww thanks!
We studied this piece for A level. I was so happy there some recorder on the syllabus. Didn’t get to play it though, unfortunately. Great stuff!
Amazing
This piece is one of my favorite, it is pretty rock and roll for me
Tx for the background theory. Very interesting.
Wonderful tutorial. Thanks very much. Cheers from the Gold Coast Aust.
A very informative and illuminating video -- thank you for this!
In terms of thinking about the large-scale structure and one's role in it at any given moment, I've found the analysis by Malcolm Boyd on pp. 52-57 of his book Bach: The Brandenburg Concertos to be very helpful, especially his form chart on pp. 56-57. I often look at the first movement in my theory and analysis classes, and the Boyd analysis takes a piece that can seem overwhelming and reduces it to a small set of formal techniques that Bach consistently applies (which in no way minimizes the elegance or scope of Bach's achievement, to be clear). I've been known to call out the different events as they go by -- "Fortspinnung! Sequence! Modulation to iii!" -- like a sportscaster, which I hope amuses my students. And I also use that performance by Voices of Music, as it's so virtuosic and sensitive and buoyant.
Brilliant, thanks for the info!
Haaa Sarah! I love this tutorial pretty much. I'm just starting over again after almost twenty years pause of playing the recorder and you give so helpful tips. Thank you so much and keep up the food work. Greetings to your husband and baby ❤️
Thank you for your fresh way to explain the things. I'm pretty sure that Bach knew exactly the possibilities of the instruments he wrote for. For example he never notated the low c# on the Oboe da caccia because the tone is not playable. With regard to the recorder in BWV 182 there is no f#3 at all in the solo parts and he explicitly wrote a f#2 in the recorder part where the colla parte playing 1st Violin goes to f#3. Voice 1 of the Brandenburg concerto must be an instrument in G. The lowest note is g1 and in voice 2 - which is clearly an F instrument - he avoids the f#3 in the first movement in bar 50 and two other places.
It's my favourite, last year I had been playing it a lot during lockdown.....I love it and I absolutely agree it is not for flutes! It is the same story with the 2nd one, sometimes flautists play it.....but it is for recorder!
I love that note about letting the music do the work for you. Applies a lot to Invention no. 8 on the piano in my experience.
"I'm Sarah, and I'm a recorder player." As if we didn't already know. 🙄 BTW: Keep up the good work, professor. 👍😉
I agree and also love it so much 😂
@@emmat88 :):)
thank you Sarah
Bach is da man!!!!
When I saw that "Voices of Music" video a couple of years ago, I thought the two recorders strapped together thing was really extra, and I turned it off about 8 bars into the second movement. Now that I know that the primary source indicates there might be something to that, maybe I'll give them a second chance.
Checkout on CZcams the recording with Michela Petri playing recorder 1; both recorderists are playing Mollenhauer modern recorders. This might be my favorite one on CZcams.
Recorder/traverso/historical flutes O.G. Michael Lynn also teaches the little cheat fingering for the high F#s in this piece, thank goodness. He's never been particularly pushy about mastering the leg thing. I'm glad, because I have smacked myself in the teeth twice, doing that, so I'm just not doing it anymore.
It would be really great to have a modern recorder with a bell key ;-) but the G alto also sounds like a great solution! I gave it a try, and a lot of things are easier when you move the recorder 1 part down a whole step. Nice excuse for getting a G alto!
Ooh I'll check out the Michala Petri recording! I knooow, the Baroque G alto is on my shopping list.. it never ends 🤪
One tricky aspect are the 1st mov passages where the bass drops out and there are long held notes in the upper parts without a pulse. Its very easy to get out of time with the solo violin. The first time I ever played this when I was younger, I was taken by surprise in rehearsal and quickly realised I needed to focus in those passages.
Hello again Mrs. Sarah!!!! Ive been waiting for the day that you would cover this wonderful piece and Huzzah the day has finally came!
Ive been practicing all 3 movements on my alto in between my homework for college and its a doozy😁 I personally love the fugue and hearing all the different voices of the 3rd mvmt, and I hope to play it with a group one day! I still need to work on the 2nd half of the 1st mvnt... the runs in B minor that involve Bbs and C#s are a bit tricky for me.... but I do love the 2nd mvnt! I love to experiment with a ton of toccata like improvs inbetween the call in response sections 🤣
The F#s are pretty scary too 😨
(Ps may you please cover Brandenburg 2's Recorder part as well?)
Best of luck and thank you for all you do for Recorder Gang!
#3 is my fav but #4 is great too!
Very good nice play someny notes
I love this channel, can you please do a fife recorder/flute reveiw
Does no-one here realise the reason Bach did not allow for breathing? Bach was superhuman. Celestial. He himself did not need to breathe! Apart from which, he was an extremely busy man writing for the church each week, tutoring his pupils and fathering all those children. He didn't have time to draw breath.
In 2020 I was planning a trip to Leipzig to follow in Bach's footsteps en route to England to a conference and visit my sisters. I had even booked my place in a recital to be held in the Bach Museum. Well, we all know what happened. I don't envisage being able to go now, for various reasons. But one day, hopefully not too soon, I shall visit Bach in heaven and hear the angels singing his cantatas.
I luv these in depth breakdowns so much, I keep coming back. I feel like these make it possible for me to somewhat understand how everything comes together and how you all manage to play a concerto together.
Also, where can I find that youtube short you had made on this one. It was so funny.
I definitely agree with the tip for the opening BUT I also do like those cute mordentes 😅
Very helpful lecture on how to play Brandenburg 4. I have been practicing with midi, using organ as the accompaniment (which I think sounds great). Regarding different ways to play measures 3 and 5, I prefer to play it as Bach wrote it, with 3 full eighth notes. I see you are playing it the same as Maurice Steger, with the 3rd eighth note short (staccato).
9:18 I also sung some piece of early music with lots and lots of longae and maximae (quadruple and octuple whole notes)... I said you need iron lungs to sung that piece... The same is true for some of Bach's pieces, because he had always thought as a keyboard player. If your lungs are of the size of a hot-air ballon, you may be able to nail them...
First comment! hi Sarah! :) I love Bach, this is awesome
I'm a pro flautist, but I do.play rec as a 2nd instrument (def not as well as the dedicated rec players), so I play this concerto from time to time. I love it, but I prefer the second part as the long passages in B min in Rec 1 just flummox me! I use alternative fingerings when there are a-sharps everywhere but I still get in a tangle. G alto would solve this problem. But really i ought to be doing dedicated B minor practice, which you've inspired and reminded me about!
The echo flutes look really hard to pull off, but works perfectly! I tend to think.of this concerto as an expanded violin concerto but where the recorders take centre stage in the slow movement.
See this is da s*** I'd never know if not for you
Hi Sarah, what a great tutorial on the Brandenburg 4! It is, indeed, the best of all of them!
Have you ever seen the echo flute made by the Swiss woodwind maker Andreas Schoni?
Concert Koln made a recording using such flutes, and they seem to be far more easier to play than the one used by
Voices of Music. Cheers, Ricardo
A piece w many Arpeggios is #Asturias for guitar. You are right... Arpeggios must be practiced and learned as u said, like the back of your hand
Off-stage Performer? Never 😉 Great post and thank you for sharing your insights inc. scoff!
I think that my commitment to music may not include kneeing a recorder into my teeth...
This represents a win for silver flute methinks....
Can you give us a tutorial on how to glow as you play; like you do? ☺️ Thanks this is great!
Hi Sarah, I really like your reactions and have a request. We have a quite nice Saxophone player in Germany calles Jakob Manz, that also plays the recorder like crazy, There is a video of him playing at the leverkusen Jazz days. the song is called THUNDERBIRD. This might be interesting for you!!
I was just about to try of attemping the 1st mov of the 4 concerto. Timing and time paradox.
Great tutorial and beautiful performance as usual. May I ask where you got the "backup" track that you used to record the piece? It seems to have everything except for the two recorders in the concertino. Was it just MIDI music with the recorder parts muted? It sounded pretty good for MIDI.
Last time i played an F sharp, i hurt myself. I will try again a little bit slower.
RIP your teeth and gums
First time I hear about the recorder 1 played on a G recorder. Solve the F# problem (and the fingering in general must be much easier than on a F recorder)...
YES! Try just reading the part a whole step down. Much easier. Now I want a G alto...
It was for me too, until researching this video! What I didn't mention was - you see how in the passage before Voice 1hits the high F#, Voice 2 runs up to it and turns around right before playing it. So maybe Bach knew something we didn't, like they were recorders in different keys... complete conjecture but an interesting theory!
I've been looking to get a cheap beginner's alto as I always liked recorders. I like lower range instruments, but tenors are a bit too expensive, as I just want to dip my toes. I think this is a sign!
Same!
I can recommend the Yamaha 300 series.
They are cheap but the quality is very good for a plastic instrument, better than some cheap wooden ones. Even if you later upgrade to a nice wooden instrument, the Yamaha 300 will serve you well as a backup to practice scales and such.
It iiisssss...... :)
I find the switching of instruments in the "echo flutes" a little distracting. But it sounds okay. Cool video, Sarah!
One thing to note is that G major and E minor are very comfortable keys on the Baroque flute. I’ve practiced the two “flauti” parts both on the recorder and the Baroque flute, and frankly, it feels a little bit more idiomatic on the Baroque flute. I’ve recently heard a Baroque ensemble perform this with Baroque flutes, and it sounded pretty good. I’m not making a hard argument that this was intended for the Baroque flute, but rather that, until evidence is discovered that clarifies what Bach meant for the “flauti d’echo” parts, any combination of instruments that works and sounds good should not be considered unorthodox.
Ah so interesting! And I agree - if it sounds good, then great. I fully welcome baroque flute versions too! Everything can be tried once. Now, off to dust off my theremin... ;)
The moment when you live in Brandenburg and never realised that there is a Concerto by Bach... (Explanation: Brandenburg is a state of Germany, surrounding the capital of Germany, Berlin.)
I play no instruments nation soat all, so why do I find the way she presents her information so riveting?
Typo, I play no instruments at all, so why do I find the way she presents her information so riveting?
“Open to other opinions, let me know in the comments” *eye twitches* 😂
Hahaa
Where can I buy a good recorder?? Do they come in different tone ranges? Alto, sóprano... Beautiful music.
por favor coloque legendas em português Brazil. Thanks
Muchas gracias por los video, pero que pocibilidades hay de que pongan los subtitulos en español que soy de colombia y no domino el idioma
Hi Sarah, tanks for your tutoriel. But, Telemann definitely knew about the trickiness of the f sharp and still there are quite à lot of them for exemple in the concerto in do ... I think Bach just waited the recorder players to play it perfectly. Bye
Telemann was also a recorderist and known to be quite an outstanding recorderist, so that's a different situation.
You're right there's lots in Telemann.. and I'm SURE Bach was expecting perfection from his musicians 😅 It's often when composers push the instrument further we break new ground!
Hello miss Jeffery, have you ever considered F-recorders in Chorton, which would sound like G-recorders in Kammerton? Although not entirely impossible, the high F# is even by your own looks of it not really a smooth solution, is it? However, I own an F baroque alto which can produce the said F# even by attacking it out of the blue, but beautiful it is not really. Personally I prefer and recommend the G-flute option, played in F with nice F-fingerings, which tune also far superior.
Cheerio, Willem (professional recorder player)
clarifying: by attacking the F# I meant: wihout the support of the knee...
The reason why only one G recorder (for the first part) is suggested is that the second part actually uses the low F natural (exactly once if memory serves).
However, the idea of a pair of matched Chorton recorders is VERY attractive. The low F can be gotten around by looking at how the second part is handled if the F major harpsichord concerto, which makes a couple of octave adjustments to avoid asking for low E flat in the second part. I think it's quite possible that Bach just made a "thinko" in the score of the 4th Brandenburg, which he discovered and corrected (either when copying out the parts or in rehearsal) so that the corrected version is what is preserved (notated a major second lower) in the harpsichord concerto.
This episode is very educational, would it have the same meaning and meaning for BWV 1057, Harpsichord Concerto No.6 in F major (1738)?
Hi, can you play La Campanella on the recorder?
I found someone else play it on yt, maybe try searching it
Hhmmm.. I wonder how it would be received if the 'echo' recorder was delivered from a covert area in the balcony?
-[ you give great scoff ]
Well,telemann didnt use f sharp. He played recorder. 9:21
Can you recommend a good play-along version for a recorder tuned to 435?
435... oof! Not specifically. You could detune it with an app or programme? Cat in the Keys Music do lots of good playalongs with various tunings but it tends to be 415, 440 and 466.
Hey Sarah lovely tutorial. Got a problem hope you can advise. I am 55 and have been playing since I was 7, I have recently started playing again after a couple years. Sadly heart wasn't in right place. Now with renewed vigor dusted off my books, hauled out my descant and started playing. Loving it, my problem I can not hit a top A without squeaking, notes after up to top D fine. Just a top A, any hints on how I can overcome this. If I play on a run up not normally a problem, if I have to start up there it sounds like I am strangling some poor animal 😕. Any advice please. Thanks Helen 😊
Hi Helen, that's so fantastic you've come back to the recorder again! This video should help: czcams.com/video/S5BJDurzX6M/video.html But in short: blow lots of 'fast' air, make the opening of the thumb hole really tiny, and Believe!
Hi Helen, how old is your instrument? Is it from wood or plastic? My advice is: get a new recorder. If you don't want to spend a lot of money, get a plastic one by Yamaha. Whichever plastic-recorder from them I tried was rather good and really easy to play, especially in the higher registers.
@@Team_Recorder oh my, can't believe it, it worked... I think I must of been letting too much air in, hence strangled animal 😂😂. Thanks it's even made it easier on notes above, no longer will I get the dreaded "here comes an A" Thanks Sarah for taking the time to reply, it really has made a huge difference 😊
@@penelopegoldberry8305 only a couple of years old, just a cheap Aulos, but played a wooden in and ensemble on tenor, loved it. When I get back into playing I will properly I will look for a wooden. Thanks for the recommendation though. What Sarah suggested did the trick. 😊
Thanks for the link. I watched tonight and realised actually how lazy I had got. Slouching, bad breath control etc. Basic scales and arpeggios, things I was taught throughout exams. Though many moons ago and I am sure much harder now... Will definitely put in to practise tomorrow. Thanks H x
Let’s go! Brandenburg No. 4 is my favorite!
Hi is there any video tutorial available for recorder?
you’re in the right place! I have about 400
How can i then access it Sister😊
I noticed you didn't mention the use of a bell-stopping key to hit the high F#'s. Is that because it is non-historic, or considered a cheat?
Another question... you mention the use of an alto in G, but are there baroque style recorders in G available? I spent some time searching and could only find Renaissance G altos.
you used sibelius haah, i can hear how bad it is. May i suggest Noteperformer³
impressive playing tho
hi beautiful Sarah... please teach me how to play recorder
Sarah, do me a favor: try playing traverso. With your experience on the transverse flute and your experience on the recorder, I think you would be fascinated.
that is actually… a great idea
when singing in a choir, Bach have no breathing put in either. It is all up to the conductor to intepret how it should be peformed. We certainly don't sing it as written.
Bach had 13 children. I suspect that he did not know the details of recorder fingerings. The man took shortcuts everywhere and produced loads to keep the fandamily fed.
22 Children according to John Eliot Gardiner .
@@alanbash2921 thx for the correction
I love this. As an amateur I love guidance which helps to play the big pieces for Recorder such as Brandenberg #4