Exploring Music in Context Section 3: AOI 1

Original Song:

Selected song: Bella Ciao

Song Link (YouTube): "Bella Ciao" - Italian Partisan Song

Culture/Country of Origin: Italy

Composer: Unknown

Notation/Sheet Music: Bella Ciao Sheet Music with Chords for Piano (Solo) | MuseScore.com

Significance: This song was made as an anti-fascist anthem in Italy, being chanting all across the nation.

My adaptation: 

Score: Adaptation.pdf




    For me, playing my adaptation of Bella Ciao on the cello wasn't just a remake of the original song. It was a revival of the anthem through a different lense. The cello can not only provide that same strong feeling as the original song does but also give it emotion through things like greater dynamic control, vibrato, bow placement on the cello (between the fingerboard and bridge/tip to frog), and other things like accents, fingerings, and strings. These elements give my adaptation the translation it needs, creating a similar song, but with different aspects. The cello is a very unique instrument. Although it mainly lies in the bass clef but can also slip into the tenor and treble clefs, it produces such a unique sound which produces a different feeling than the original song, even if it were to be played identically. Since the cello isn't vocal like the song, I had to create melodies which felt like they spoke without words. I experimented with the different elements of music such as melody, rhythm, form, structure and more, using the different aspects of the cello listed above.

I want to start off with the melody, because to me, this was the most important element. Since the melody of Bella Ciao is very simple, I didn't have much room to mess around with it and therefore had to add completely different parts of my own. I was already going to change the song into my own adaptation, but having less notes to experiment with made me look at other elements for inspiration. For example, I looked at genre/style of the piece which was made in the form of an Italian Folk song and used that to create bars of my own. The next part to creating different melodies was to mix up the rhythm. I saw that Bella Ciao only used whole, half, quarter, and eight notes, so in order to create a similar adaptation, I decided to stick with this. However, I attempted to give each melody its own rhythm unlike the original piece which kept a consistent rhythm throughout in order to deliver a protest message. In other words, Bella Ciao stays relatively similar with its melodies and rhythms in order to send a strong message to society, while my adaptation twists it around and gives it more variety and emotion, focusing on the song's feeling itself rather than any specific message (I am also limited by the fact that I am turning a vocal song into a non-vocal song). Another important note I want to make is that the transition from one melody to multiple back-to-back, creating a piece of successive melodies.


Here, near the end of the song, I introduce dotted eighth notes in order to switch up the rhythm:

I felt like protest songs required strong bowing with fast and deliberate vibrato. For this, I would switch strings rather than play open strings which I could not vibrato with. I also chose a tempo of around 118 which fits in zone of slightly fast but still meaningful music which does not sound overly rushed.

    Some of my melodies were longer than others, but there was repetition in the song. if each melody were a letter, here is the structure of my adaptation (only A and D are played twice):

A A B C D E F D 

This structure repeats the first melody giving off a strong feeling in the beginning, and then transitions to B which is slightly softer. Next, I made sure to make each melody such that whether it starts at piano, mezzo forte, or forte at the beginning, it would always end with forte or fortissimo.

    As mentioned earlier, Bella Ciao stays consistent with its strong message through powerful notes rather than ups and downs, whereas mine is a mixture of both meaning and depth. I added high notes and notes. I also put dynamic contrast between the 'protesting' parts which challenge the fascist regime versus the 'reflective' parts which think of the good days in Italy.

    To conclude, although both Bella Ciao and my adaption are similar in the sense that their key is the same and their tempos are similar, they differ in many aspects such as the medium they are played through, their melodies, rhythms, structure, and expression.