Lesson: Ornamentation in Bach by Jason Vieaux

Grammy winner Jason Vieaux lectures and demonstrates his methods of ornamentation in the music of Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). This comes via the GFA Channel on YouTube. Nice video with the music notation below, dang I have to step up my game obviously! You can also check out the lesson by Scott Morris on Baroque Ornamentation on Classical Guitar which will give you more info.


Link & Source: https://youtu.be/8HrQ9UnePGk.

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Bradford Werner
Bradford Werner

Bradford Werner is a classical guitarist and music publisher from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He originally created this site for his students at the Victoria Conservatory of Music but now shares content worldwide. Curating guitar content helps students absorb the culture, musical ideas, and technique of the classical guitar. Bradford also has a YouTube channel with over 94,000 subscribers and 13 million views. He taught classical guitar at the Victoria Conservatory of Music for 16 years and freelanced in Greater Victoria for 20 years and now dedicates much of his time curating content online and helping connect the classical guitar community. See more at his personal website.

4 Comments

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  1. Огромное спасибо! Вы доставили мне огромное наслаждение. Много раз я слушал этот урок и много раз буду слушать его снова!
    Спасибо!

  2. This is simply a ridiculous lesson. The person who commented “gtrmusic69” is absolutely right. It’s so sad that the classical guitar world is FULL of people who are either badly educated or not at all. Vieaux (which means veal or something like that) is a prime example of badly educated. But because the rest of the classical world is like that they think he speaks the truth. The whole thing about “melodic ornamentation” – the way he does it – is beyond CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!

    • I disagree Rodger. This is common Baroque practice and completely within the improvisational nature of the music. We have many examples of written ornamentation as well as treatise on this stuff. I could recommend a number of books for you on Baroque performance practice if you’d like.

  3. He’s a great teacher, isn’t he?
    I really enjoyed seeing him play at the last Darwin International Guitar Festival, had a chat by the pool table afterwards too, he’s a good fellow.

    I’m a big fan of the mordent on the downbeat.

    What do we know of the Baroque musician practice to ornament; were all performers ornamenting in such a liberal musical dialect or would it vary between composers / regions / genres (Sanz vs Bach / German vs Italian vs French / Italian style / French style etc…)?

    Would Bach actually have written his French and Italian suites with those stylistic ornamentation’s in mind for performance or would have have ‘Germanised’ the ornamental style and only the written music was in the French / Italian styles and so on..?

    Good advice on cycles of trills. I’ll have to try some of this.

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