Hey gang,

My wife is taking up the cello, and we'd like to start playing together as she's made good progress. She's got a book of pieces for cello and piano, one of them Chopin's Op 9 no 2. Except it's in F sharp minor. I imagine the arranger did it that way to make the cello part easier, but I'm not up to learning this in a whole new key. It took me long enough the first time :>)

Can some kind soul tell me how many steps up or down I need to go to transpose my wife's part back to e flat? My music theory is obviously non-existent, so if this is even dumber than most of my questions I'm hoping you'll take pity on me...

Sincere thanks,
CG

Do you mean F sharp major? You would have to transpose your wife's part down 3 half steps.

BUT...
1. Do you plan to write a new part for yourself(matching the accompaniement but transposing to E flat) or just play the
original Chopin piece together with your wife's transposed part?

2. If you play the original Chopin piece toegether with your wife's part transposed, it may not sound that good since you'll be doubling her melodic line. It might be better to just play the left hand part of the original Nocturne.

F sharp down to E flat is a tone and a half. The key change may turn out much too difficult for your wife if she's just taking up the cello, much worse than you having to learn a new key at the piano - I don't know, I'm not a cellist.

FWIW, there's a transcription of the piece for cello and piano here at IMSLP that's in the original key:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Nocturnes,_Op.9_%28Chopin,_Frederic%29

Steven

I seem to remember someone telling me that flats are difficult to play on string instruments. This might be why it was transposed to F#.

Sounds like a fun project though. Enjoy!

That's certainly true on guitar. Once you get more than 1-2 flats, chords can quickly become unmanageably large if you don't use barre chords or a capo. Also, the inability to use open strings in most cases makes things difficult.

To some extent that's so, but I play violin/viola and I can tell you that playing this nocturne in E flat would be easier than in F#, especially for a beginner. I wonder is it actually in A major in the arrangement cardguy mentions? (same key sig as F#minor)

Cardguy, does her tune go: E C#--- B C# B-- A-- ?

Also check the lowest note for the cello part. Might be a rather obvious point to make, but there's nothing worse than getting most way through transposing before realising that you're about to run out of cello (at the bottom end) :-[

I don't know this piece (by number anyway) so may not be relevant here.

PS I quite like the cello

Hi Folks,

I want to thank you all for your kind assistance. Thanks very much indeed for that resource Steven. Curra, my wife is out at the moment, but when she gets back I'll ask her about that.

I like the cello as well Canonie. My hats off to my wife. She started from scratch less then a year ago and sounds pretty good already. Much too difficult for me. I don't know how she does it. Great work ethic for one. She's putting in 2-3 hours a day easily.