The cello ( CHEL-oh), or violoncello ( VY-ə-lən-CHEL-oh, Italian pronunciation:[vjolonˈtʃɛllo]), is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G2, D3 and A3. The viola's four strings are each an octave higher. Music for the cello is generally written in the bass clef, with tenor clef, and treble clef used for higher-range passages.
In music, a bow is a tensioned stick which has hair coated in rosin affixed to it. It is moved across some part of a musical instrument to cause vibration, which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, such as the violin, viola, cello, and bass, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones.
The six Cello Suites, BWV 1007–1012, are suites for unaccompanied cello by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). They are some of the most frequently performed solo compositions ever written for cello. Bach most likely composed them during the period 1717–1723, when he served as Kapellmeister in Köthen. The title given on the cover of the Anna Magdalena Bach manuscript was Suites à Violoncello Solo senza Basso.
In music, a double stop is the technique of playing two notes simultaneously on a stringed instrument such as a violin, a viola, a cello, or a double bass. On instruments such as the Hardanger fiddle it is common and often employed. In performing a double stop, two separate strings are bowed or plucked simultaneously. Although the term itself suggests these strings are to be fingered (stopped), in practice one or both strings may be open.
The Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043, also known as the Double Violin Concerto, is a violin concerto of the Late Baroque era, which Johann Sebastian Bach composed around 1730. It is one of the composer's most successful works.
The sonatas and partitas for solo violin are a set of six works composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. They are sometimes referred to in English as the sonatas and partias for solo violin in accordance with Bach's headings in the autograph manuscript: "Partia" was commonly used in German-speaking regions during Bach's time, whereas the Italian "partita" was introduced to this set in the 1879 Bach Gesellschaft edition, having become standard by that time. The set consists of three sonatas da chiesa in four movements and three partitas in dance-form movements. The 2nd Partita is widely known for its Chaconne, considered one of the most masterly and expressive works ever written for solo violin.
The Partita in D minor for solo violin by Johann Sebastian Bach was written between 1717 and 1720. It is a part of his compositional cycle called Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin.
Daniel Müller-Schott is a German cellist.
Wolfgang Fortner was a German composer, composition teacher and conductor.
Mikhail Emmanuilovich Goldstein, was a German composer, violinist and violin teacher of German-Jewish origin, brother of prominent violinist Boris Goldstein. His great uncle was the physicist Eugen Goldstein.
Nathan "Tossy" Spivakovsky, a Jewish, Russian Empire-born, German-trained violin virtuoso, was considered one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century.
Alois Kottmann was a German violinist, music pedagogue, university professor and patron. He was based in Frankfurt, where he founded several ensembles, and taught at both the Hoch Conservatory and the Musikhochschule Frankfurt. He founded concert series in the area, and a prize for young violinists.
Michael Bach, also known as Michael Bach Bachtischa, is a German cellist, composer, and visual artist.
The concerto for two harpsichords in C minor, BWV 1060, is a concerto for two harpsichords and string orchestra by Johann Sebastian Bach. It is likely to have originated in the second half of the 1730s as an arrangement of an earlier concerto, also in C minor, for oboe and violin. That conjectural original version of the concerto, which may have been composed in Bach's Köthen years (1717–1723), is lost, but has been reconstructed in several versions known as BWV 1060R.
The six sonatas for violin and obbligato harpsichord BWV 1014–1019 by Johann Sebastian Bach are works in trio sonata form, with the two upper parts in the harpsichord and violin over a bass line supplied by the harpsichord and an optional viola da gamba. Unlike baroque sonatas for solo instrument and continuo, where the realisation of the figured bass was left to the discretion of the performer, the keyboard part in the sonatas was almost entirely specified by Bach. They were probably mostly composed during Bach's final years in Cöthen between 1720 and 1723, before he moved to Leipzig. The extant sources for the collection span the whole of Bach's period in Leipzig, during which time he continued to make changes to the score.
The Concerto, BWV 525a, is a trio sonata in C major for violin, cello and basso continuo, based on material otherwise found in Johann Sebastian Bach's first Organ Sonata, BWV 525, and Flute Sonata in A major, BWV 1032. The oldest extant manuscript containing the BWV 525a arrangement, D-B Mus.ms. Bach St 345, is dated to the middle of the 18th century. Although this version of Bach's sonata movements may have originated during his lifetime in the circle around him, it seems unlikely that the composer supervised, or even ordered, the manufacture of the string trio adaptation, thus the arrangement has been listed in BWV Anh. II, that is the Anhang (Anh.) of doubtful works, in the 1998 edition of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV). Breitkopf & Härtel published BWV 525a in 1965. Digital facsimiles of 18th- and 19th-century manuscript copies of the arrangement, in which the sonata is titled "Concerto", became available in the 21st century.
Johann Sebastian Bach wrote his fifth Brandenburg Concerto, BWV 1050.2, for harpsichord, flute and violin as soloists, and an orchestral accompaniment consisting of strings and continuo. An early version of the concerto, BWV 1050.1, originated in the late 1710s. On 24 March 1721 Bach dedicated the final form of the concerto to Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg.
Philippe Borer was a Swiss violinist, scholar and teacher.
Georges Frey was a French violinist, viola player and specialist of the curved bow. He is the father of the pianist and organist Jean-Claude Frey.
Rudolf Gaehler is a German violinist. He uses the curved bow for playing polyphonic music.
