

This site is home to Alea Publishing & Recording, specializing in music for the bass clarinet.
We offer a growing catalog of creative, artistic transcriptions and new works for bass clarinet solo & ensemble.
Brasilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) composed his well-known Bachianas brasileiras no.5 in 1938, for soprano solo accompanied by an orchestra of 'celli. The first movement of the work, the Aria, is one of his most familiar and beloved works, admired for its transcendent, lyrical melody. This transcription makes the piece available for bass clarinet with piano accompaniment.
This transcription provides the bass clarinetist with a lovely performance piece, offering the performer challenges of expression and phrasing. If performed as written, the solo part will sound one octave lower than the soprano original. The more advanced performer may wish to transpose some or all of the transcription up one octave, to the original soprano range. The piano accompaniment is a faithful reduction of the composer's original score, yet thoroughly playable.
Extended-range instrument NOT required. Piano score: 8 pages, staple bound; Part: 2 pages, single sheet.
Listen to the work in its original instrumentation:
Hard Copy Edition
Add this item to your cart if you wish to have the hard-copy music shipped to you. We also offer this piece via PDF download: click here to choose that option.
Kim Davenport
President
Alea Publishing & Recording was founded in 1997 by Michael and Kim Davenport, the father-daughter bass clarinet/piano duo. As performers searching for new repertoire and teachers working with students eager to develop as performers, it quickly became clear that there was a need for more repertoire featuring the bass clarinet. Filling this need became the mission of Alea.
The Alea Publishing catalog has now grown to include over 400 titles. We pride ourselves on the accuracy and quality of our sheet music, as well as our ability to reach customers around the world with both hard copy scores and PDF downloads.
We are proud of the diversity of our catalog in terms of the inclusion of works by composers and arrangers from around the world. We are interested in continuing to expand this diversity, representing musical ideas from around the world.
Following Michael's passing in 2019, Kim has taken over solo management of Alea Publishing. In 2020, Alea established the Dolphy Prize, an annual award for Black musicians who are engaged in composing and performing works featuring the bass clarinet.
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