Beemer
Active member
Can stradella bass be satisfactorily used for amateur classical music, or is a free bass accordion necessary?
Playing classical with stradella bass?
- Thread starter Beemer
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AccordionJustice
Active member
For most classical music you'd want to opt for a free bass system. Classical music requires multiple octaves and more notes than stradella can provide. That being said you can arrange some simple classical pieces for stradella. For example Rondo alla Turca sounds wonderful on stradella bass!
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Walker
🪗
This type of music is definitely a 'thing' - from the accordion classics by Frosini, Volpi etc. to transcriptions of classical works, such as the piece AccordionJustice mentions. The heyday for stradella bass classical accordion, I think, was the 1950s. There is certainly no shortage of this music available and there were many amazing accordionists of this type. I like listening to much of it.
Over the years, especially in my youth, I made various attempts at classical music with stradella bass. However, to be honest, I never really enjoyed playing that type of music. The treble side was often really chord heavy and performance directions galore. The single octave bass and pre-set chords are a bit restrictive.
I think it's fair to say that free bass fundamentally changes the nature of the accordion. I say this after spending the last 30 years and more playing stradella accordion, albeit mainly Scottish traditional dance music. But however much I love traditional music, it is a little bit limiting if you have the desire to do something more polyphonic. Yet, many people will never have the faintest desire to play highly polyphonic music, and that's just fine. But free bass does make a huge difference to the experience of playing music. Just having the extra octaves on the bass and no pre-set chords opens the flow of the music. It becomes more complete, a bit like the organ, piano, harpsichord etc. The tone is different also - I find the bass has equality with the treble in it's tonal presence. When you play, everything just seems stereo plus.
I think there is great merit to stradella bass, especially for folk, dance or jazz music etc. and playing in bands. But for classical or new original music then free bass is probably more suitable.
Over the years, especially in my youth, I made various attempts at classical music with stradella bass. However, to be honest, I never really enjoyed playing that type of music. The treble side was often really chord heavy and performance directions galore. The single octave bass and pre-set chords are a bit restrictive.
I think it's fair to say that free bass fundamentally changes the nature of the accordion. I say this after spending the last 30 years and more playing stradella accordion, albeit mainly Scottish traditional dance music. But however much I love traditional music, it is a little bit limiting if you have the desire to do something more polyphonic. Yet, many people will never have the faintest desire to play highly polyphonic music, and that's just fine. But free bass does make a huge difference to the experience of playing music. Just having the extra octaves on the bass and no pre-set chords opens the flow of the music. It becomes more complete, a bit like the organ, piano, harpsichord etc. The tone is different also - I find the bass has equality with the treble in it's tonal presence. When you play, everything just seems stereo plus.
I think there is great merit to stradella bass, especially for folk, dance or jazz music etc. and playing in bands. But for classical or new original music then free bass is probably more suitable.
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Beemer
Active member
I enjoy playing classical music on my acoustic piano so it's not a great loss for my awaited Scandella not to have free bass. Of course they do have more expensive convertor models but I need to buy food!
Vladimir M.
Active member
Hi Beemer,
A good musician can do wonders even with a standard bass. It's all up to the person and how he arranges the work. However, Stradella bass requires a thought-out interpretation strategy. It is also important to have a sufficient number of suitable bass registers = suitable sound combinations in the stradella bass.
Best regards,
Vladimir
Of course, yes. Take a look at this example (Weltmeister Supita 120-stradella bass):
A good musician can do wonders even with a standard bass. It's all up to the person and how he arranges the work. However, Stradella bass requires a thought-out interpretation strategy. It is also important to have a sufficient number of suitable bass registers = suitable sound combinations in the stradella bass.
Free bass significantly facilitates the playing of classic works. However, its use is not "mandatory" in such cases. I also saw and heard musicians who had big and expensive instruments with melodic bass and played uninterestingly and "without a soul". If I like something, I follow the rule: Simply try to play it... And either I succeed or I don't. Regardless of the bass manual ...
Best regards,
Vladimir
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Beemer
Active member
Good philosophy, thanks, Ian
Siegmund
Well-known member
As already mentioned, freebass makes it easier to play left-hand melodies over a wide range. (If you really try hard, you can do quite a lot with the fundamental and counter basses and the occasional register switch change.)
Freebass also makes it easier to play sustained notes in the left hand without overpowering the treble, by providing a way to play with only one or two banks of reeds active. IMO it's a fairly fundamental flaw with many accordions, giving them such heavy bass voicing (and then we teach people to work around it by telling them to peck at the bass buttons rather than hold them down.)
That said... you can do a lot, both amateur and professional quality, with classical music on Stradella.
Gary Dahl has a book out, "The Classical Tradition", with simplified but convincing-sounding arrangements of 2 or 3 dozen classical pieces.
The Frosini compositions and arrangements were mentioned upthread (and if you are outside the USA, these are now out-of-copyright and legally freely downloadable -- he died in 1951.)
I'd also call your attention to the mid-20th century Soviet composers and arrangers. Nikolai Chaikin, among others, wrote extensively for Stradella-only left hand. I think of his Concerto in Bb for Bayan and Orchestra as a high-water mark of how far a Stradella instrument can go towards 'serious classical music'. Most of the later concerto writers have opted for freebass.
Alexander Dmitriev's arrangement of Rossini's "Largo al factotum" from Barber of Seville ('Cavatina Figaro') is also Stradella-only and can be seen in dozens upon dozens of Youtube videos.
Freebass also makes it easier to play sustained notes in the left hand without overpowering the treble, by providing a way to play with only one or two banks of reeds active. IMO it's a fairly fundamental flaw with many accordions, giving them such heavy bass voicing (and then we teach people to work around it by telling them to peck at the bass buttons rather than hold them down.)
That said... you can do a lot, both amateur and professional quality, with classical music on Stradella.
Gary Dahl has a book out, "The Classical Tradition", with simplified but convincing-sounding arrangements of 2 or 3 dozen classical pieces.
The Frosini compositions and arrangements were mentioned upthread (and if you are outside the USA, these are now out-of-copyright and legally freely downloadable -- he died in 1951.)
I'd also call your attention to the mid-20th century Soviet composers and arrangers. Nikolai Chaikin, among others, wrote extensively for Stradella-only left hand. I think of his Concerto in Bb for Bayan and Orchestra as a high-water mark of how far a Stradella instrument can go towards 'serious classical music'. Most of the later concerto writers have opted for freebass.
Alexander Dmitriev's arrangement of Rossini's "Largo al factotum" from Barber of Seville ('Cavatina Figaro') is also Stradella-only and can be seen in dozens upon dozens of Youtube videos.
Beemer
Active member
Siegmund, thanks for pointing me to Gary Dahl's book which I will buy.
Ian
Ian
Very impressive. I've attempted the C minor prelude on stradella (though never got it up to the furious tempo demanded) but I would not have thought the fugue possible. For what it's worth, here's my own, far less impressive rendition of the much simpler prelude in C.
Satie's Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes are easy to pull off and sound great on stradella accordion. Also, plenty of "light" classical pieces like Khachaturian's Masquerade Waltz or Shostakovich's waltz from "Jazz" Suite No. 2 can be done without much compromise.
Beemer
Active member
I love playing Shostakovich's waltz on my acoustic piano so I'll give it a try on my new Scandalli 37/120 Air3T
AccordionJustice
Active member
Ive always wanted to hear this beautiful piece played on accordion. Great job!
Thanks! It just requires moving a few of the left hand notes to the right hand and some fast switching of the bass registers. Also, I used the LM register in the right hand, as that blended the best with the bass notes and sounded the least like two different instruments.Ive always wanted to hear this beautiful piece played on accordion. Great job!
craigd
Active member
I think this guy does a pretty good job.
Here is an easier Satie one which fits nicely on a stradella accordion!
Also nice BBC programme on Satie
The Unsent Letters of Erik Satie - BBC Sounds
Alistair McGowan tells the story of the love letters that composer Erik Satie never sent.
www.bbc.co.uk
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Beemer
Active member
Thanks for your reply and beautifully played!
Neil Thornock
Member
Echoing Vladimir above, you can do pretty big serious classical works in transcription, in addition to the many "light" ones. You can go a looooong ways with this. Living in the land of Stradella accordions as I do, I think it's an important quest(ion).
Here is a violinist who transcribed Liszt's entire piano sonata for unaccompanied violin.
Surely accordion could do just about anything then??
Stretta Music sells a transcription of Beethoven's entire Rondo a capriccio. I'm slowly working on Schumann's Blumenstuck, and the entire Album for the Young can work well. And Brahms's Op. 39 waltzes would all work, along with thousands of other waltzes, polonaises, mazurkas, etc. Many sonata movements would do well. There is loads and loads of music that will work -- maybe almost anything, with a creative enough approach. What you might lose in contrapuntal freedom can sometimes be made up for in timbral variety or interesting textural recomposition.
Here's one of my favorite demonstrations, posted in this forum elsewhere in the past:
Here is a violinist who transcribed Liszt's entire piano sonata for unaccompanied violin.
Surely accordion could do just about anything then??
Stretta Music sells a transcription of Beethoven's entire Rondo a capriccio. I'm slowly working on Schumann's Blumenstuck, and the entire Album for the Young can work well. And Brahms's Op. 39 waltzes would all work, along with thousands of other waltzes, polonaises, mazurkas, etc. Many sonata movements would do well. There is loads and loads of music that will work -- maybe almost anything, with a creative enough approach. What you might lose in contrapuntal freedom can sometimes be made up for in timbral variety or interesting textural recomposition.
Here's one of my favorite demonstrations, posted in this forum elsewhere in the past:
When I was visiting Ed, he pulled out a copy of a Clementi Sonatina, it was something that I had played 3rd accordion on decades ago when I was in the orchestra... I could not believe how easily it came out (if you can play the C scale, you can play a Clementi Sonatina... LOL), as I just joined in without any practice and sight read that off the pages... lol
Two Stradellas enjoying a little Clementi, it was awesome!!
Two Stradellas enjoying a little Clementi, it was awesome!!
Zevy
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Here's my "short" list of many pieces where (I believe) justice can be done with the stradella bass accordion:
- Cleopha (Scott Joplin)
- Flight of the Bumble Bee
- Minuet from Flute Quartet (Mozart)
- Minuet ("Haydn"/Hofstetter)
- Le Basque (Marais)
- Malaguena (Lecuona)
- Menuetto (Mozart)
- Rondo alla Turca (Mozart)
- Schön Rosmarin (Kreisler)
- The Swan (Saint Saens)
- Voi Che Sapete (Mozart)
- William Tell Overture Part IV (Rossini)
- Waltz Op. 69/2 (Chopin)
- Military Polonaise (Chopin)
- Gigue (Handel)
- 2nd Waltz (Shostakovich)
- March Militaire (Schubert)
- Serenade (Schubert)
- Musical Moment #3 (Schubert)
- Minute Waltz (Chopin)
- Under the Double Eagle (JF Wagner)
Whasanike
Member
The more I try the more pieces I find are possible to play using Stradella bass accordion. Also finding many impossible to do justice to. Sometimes the right hand has to do extra duty, and the bass has to fake counterpoint using the chords. The bass line is usually important. triplet chords can be faked using bellows shake, for example and other tricks, finding new interpretations, and ways to fake orchestral sounds
You won't know unless you try it.
