# Any works for prepared cello, violin, etc?



## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

I've been experimenting a bit and can get some lovely whistles and buzzes with paperclips and clothespins, but I'm curious: has any composer done any significant works for prepared instruments of the violin family?


----------



## Guest (Sep 6, 2012)

Mauricio Kagel, string quartet nr. 1

George Crumb, string quartet "Black Angels"

(There are plenty more, but it's almost 11 and I haven't eaten breakfast yet.)


----------



## Taneyev (Jan 19, 2009)

Would you better prepare a work for cello or violin?


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

The scordatura tunings are as far as I will go in 'preparedness'. Are there works which include scordatura tuning for the cello?


----------



## SuperTonic (Jun 3, 2010)

Hilltroll72 said:


> The scordatura tunings are as far as I will go in 'preparedness'. Are there works which include scordatura tuning for the cello?


Bach's 5th Solo Cello Suite (C minor) can optionally be played with the A string tuned down to a G. The edition I learned it from had optional fingerings for that tuning anyway. I don't know if it is commonly performed that way though. I learned it using normal tuning. I did try the optional tuning though and it really opens up the lower range of the instrument. If I had more time to learn the odd fingerings with that tuning I probably would I have performed it that way.


----------



## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

some guy said:


> Mauricio Kagel, string quartet nr. 1
> 
> George Crumb, string quartet "Black Angels"
> 
> (There are plenty more, but it's almost 11 and I haven't eaten breakfast yet.)


These are what I'm looking for (from the sounds of Kagel's quartet, anyway), if you've finished your breakfast.


----------



## Guest (Sep 7, 2012)

Busted!

Yes, I have finished breakfast. Two of them, actually since that post. I figured the Kagel would be right up your street!

As I've been thinking about it, though, I've realized that the things that are on the topmost layer of my memory are things that would be called extended techniques--would have been. They're not really extended any more. Just techniques. Detuning and retuning. Bowing vertically. Bowing behind the bridge and above the finger board. Running ones fingers or other objects along the strings. Stuff like that.

I'll stroll around my CDs tomorrow (maybe even before breakfast) and see what I come up with. Promise!


----------



## JoeBarron (Sep 6, 2012)

Matthias Pintscher's "Study IV for Treatise on the Veil" (2008) for string quartet uses paper clips and so on. I heard it performed a while ago by the JACK Quartet. Read all about it here.


----------



## Guest (Sep 7, 2012)

Yes! Pintscher's Study IV. Thanks Joe. All I've come up with this pass through my collection--missing the Pintscher, too--is Scelsi's Triphon, which has Tibetan brass mutes on the G and C strings of the cello.

Plenty of interesting techniques, of course. And if you wanted electronic stuff, too.... But less actual preparing than I had at first thought. 'Course, I didn't spend all THAT much time on this project! And I'm handicapped by not paying attention to program notes (looking up stuff for you, Kopachris, meant reading things I'd never read before!--and you can't tell just from listening if what you're hearing is a preparation applied to the instrument or just a particular way of playing an unaltered instrument.

There's not much if any preparation in pieces by Lachenmann, Andre, Widmann, Steen-Anderson, or Bauckholt, for instance, but there's lots of interesting ways of getting sounds out of the instruments to be sure.

Anyway, thanks again very much to Joe for taking some of the pressure off me!


----------

