Introducing the Baroque Cello — Transcript

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1. 0:02so this is my cello it was made around
2. 0:071730 in Italy in Perugia by a man called
3. 0:12Giacomo gabelli it's a it's a very fine
4. 0:16instrument I feel incredibly lucky to
5. 0:19have it it is in a baroque setup and the
6. 0:24the main or the most obvious difference
7. 0:26probably is the absence of a spike or
8. 0:29enter pin and that is simply because
9. 0:32that wasn't invented yet in the 18th
10. 0:36century that came much later and around
11. 0:38the middle of the nineteenth century
12. 0:40when the role of the cello changed from
13. 0:43being mainly a bass instrument meaning
14. 0:47being used in the lower positions and a
15. 0:50bass line to be more of a soloistic
16. 0:53instrument whether the player had to
17. 0:55whiz around in higher positions and then
18. 0:57the spike was invented to to create
19. 0:59additional support but in the Baroque
20. 1:02era altar lists just played like this
21. 1:05and I often get asked if that's not
22. 1:08tiring to have to hold the cello between
23. 1:10my legs but it's not really I just plays
24. 1:14the licks in a certain way and the cello
25. 1:16sits in it I don't have to press
26. 1:19anything it's is actually quite a
27. 1:21comfortable position another important
28. 1:24difference between Barack string
29. 1:27instruments and modern string
30. 1:29instruments and it's the material of the
31. 1:31strings we use these strings are made
32. 1:34out of gut sheep guts in this case and
33. 1:37the upper two strings unwound gut just
34. 1:41washed hopefully carefully and spun and
35. 1:45the bottom two strings the lower notes
36. 1:50they have a gut core and I wound with
37. 1:53silver to make them heavier so that they
38. 1:56produce a lower sound and compared to
39. 2:02two modern metal strings these gut
40. 2:04strings make a more textured sound it's
41. 2:08raspy in in comparison if you think of
42. 2:13the sound as peanut butter the gut
43. 2:15strings would be
44. 2:16the rough kind with bits more textured
45. 2:20and you feel more of the original
46. 2:23material another difference maybe less
47. 2:44obvious and it's the are the angles on
48. 2:47the instrument and you can see here that
49. 2:52the bridge on the cello is fairly low
50. 2:55and that has changed over the last three
51. 2:58hundred years or so the bridges have
52. 3:01become higher and therefore the angle of
53. 3:03the neck has become steeper to increase
54. 3:07pressure on the instrument and to make
55. 3:09the instrument sound louder and project
56. 3:12more in bigger concert halls so in the
57. 3:16Baroque era we have less pressure on the
58. 3:19instrument also the gut strings play a
59. 3:22role in that they're they're more
60. 3:23elastic than than modern strings and
61. 3:25create less pressure so to me it always
62. 3:28feels like the instrument can breathe
63. 3:30more because there's not so much
64. 3:33pressure on it it projects less it's
65. 3:36simply less loud
66. 3:38but the sound is more flexible and
67. 3:40defined the bow has also changed quite a
68. 3:45lot in the last 300 years you can see
69. 3:47here that the shape is convex and the
70. 3:49tip is very fine that means all the
71. 3:54weight of the bow is at the Frog where I
72. 3:57hold the bow and the tip is very light
73. 3:59and that results in the down bows and up
74. 4:05those sounding very different and that's
75. 4:07that's how it was supposed to be today
76. 4:10with the modern bow the goal is to have
77. 4:13an evenly sustained sound from the Frog
78. 4:16to the tip and for the up bow and the
79. 4:18down bow too to sound the same but in
80. 4:21the Brock era that was that was not what
81. 4:24was wanted the difference between the
82. 4:26down in the a bow was very much desired
83. 4:30and something that the music asked for
84. 4:33[Music]
85. 4:41of course the composers had these
86. 4:44instruments in mind when they wrote the
87. 4:46music and we we at the Oh II think this
88. 4:49is the best way to get close to what the
89. 4:53composer had in mind at the time of
90. 4:55writing so for us it doesn't feel like
91. 4:58we're playing old music where we're
92. 5:02making old music new and I hope that's
93. 5:06how it feels for our audiences
94. 5:10[Music]
95. 5:19you
96. 5:21[Music]