Starting Point

Information:

• Source: Approved Measures Notebook
• Key: C Major
• Measures: 49
• Parts: Cello and Piano
• Duration: 2:40 min
• Pages: 4 Pages

“Baroque music could very well be the beginning of a beautiful storm, one that, even after all this time, has yet to end.”

 
THE BAROQUE
I’ve spent countless late nights sitting alone at my piano, the rest of the house completely quiet, realizing that if I sit with Baroque music long enough, it stops feeling like something from a dusty history book. It starts feeling like an ocean - immense, dark, and full of hidden currents.

We often treat music from three hundred years ago like an exhibit behind glass, but to me, it feels completely alive. People always say we know more about distant stars than our own deep seas, and I think old music is much the same. There is always something quiet waiting to be pulled up from the dark if you’re willing to sit in the stillness and look for it.

That curiosity is what brought me to Christoph Graupner. I wasn’t looking for an academic analysis or a formal musicology paper; I just needed something real to play. I reached for my worn copy of Easy Classics to Moderns Vol 17 - a book with bent corners, penciled-in markings, and pages soft from years of use. A book that brings so many good memories. My hands landed almost by accident on a short, modest piece called Intrada.

I played through a few measures, and the melody just lingered in the room. It wasn’t flashy or complex, but it had a quiet warmth that stopped me in my tracks.

APPROVED MEASURES
That evening when I sat down to compose a new duet for cello and piano, Graupner’s line wouldn’t leave my head. I wanted to build something honest around it. I took his piano theme, framed it with simple, contemporary pop progressions, and wrote a tender, expressive line for the cello to speak back to it.

There is something deeply grounding about hearing the dark, wooden resonance of the cello weave through those piano chords. It gave that three-hundred-year-old melody a second breath - one that felt completely present.

I’ll admit, I wrestled with a lot of hesitation at first. Borrowing another composer’s work carries responsibility. It felt as if I was touching something that didn’t belong to me and it could easily break. But as I looked into the Baroque era, I learned that composers back then borrowed from one another constantly.

Handel re-worked his own melodies, Bach transcribed his peers, and passing a theme around was treated as a compliment, a way of keeping a good idea alive. Realizing that these public domain works belong to all of us directly inspired the title of this duet collection: Approved Measures.

DESTROY ALL
Still, there’s one detail about Graupner that stays with me every time I look at the score. Right before he died in 1760, he asked for all of his music to be burned and destroyed.

I think about that often when I’m sitting at the keys late at night. Imagine spending your entire life pouring your time, frustration, and soul into ink and paper, only to ask the world to erase every trace of you.

Mercifully, a legal battle saved his manuscripts, and the music survived -even if most of it ended up sitting forgotten in archives for centuries. Pulling a few of his measures out of that silence and giving them a new life between the cello and piano felt like reaching back across time. My way of saying, “Your work is still here. We’re still listening.”

Sheet Music Archive

Published Score.
The complete work is available for consultation and download.