Greensleeves To A Ground (1685), waldzither duet

[Martin Jonas]

(Also posted to the Classical forum, but I thought it might be of interest in the CBOM forum too -- apologies for the duplication)

This is a famous set of variations on one of the renaissance's stock tunes -- Greensleeves -- published by Playford in his (near identical) collections "The Division Violin" (1685) and "The Division Flute" (1706). Unlike Playford's Dancing Master, these were more sophisticated collections for the serious player, consisting mostly of variations on well-known themes set for a solo player, to a repeating ground bass. "Greensleeves To A Ground" has the theme plus 14 variations of eight bars each. The original works just fine on mandolin -- I've previously recorded it as a solo instrumental and Michael Reichenbach (Mandoisland) has a fine performance online here.

However, this new recording I have made today is based on a duo arrangement intended for two flutes by "hatao", a prolific Japanese arranger of flute music. His duet score is here. He has taken Playford's 14 variations, added another five, and has expanded them all into duets, in a variety of styles. They are consistently interesting, and technically progressively more challenging, especially the last few variations where the strict 6/8 metre gets sub-divided, and subverted, in increasingly inventive ways that took me some practice time to get my head around.

I've played this as a duet of two equal instruments by double-tracking my 1925 Zimmermann waldzither, in GDAEB tuning. The waldzither is a direct descendent of the renaissance cittern and English guittar, and therefore (sort-of) a period-appropriate instrument. The tone has an ancient feel that a modern mandolin wouldn't have, and the lower register suits the piece. As the flute score ranges over three octaves, I was very glad for the high B course on the waldzither which makes several of the variations a good deal easier to play. I've omitted hatao's penultimate variation, which seems to have been written idiomatically for flute and is all-but-unplayable on plucked instruments (for me, anyway). For the same reason, I've also omitted the cadence in bar 104.

The ground bass is realised on tenor guitar, using hatao's chord progression. The last three variations have different pulse from the rest, and I've adapted the ground to match.

I have really enjoyed playing this piece, and felt that it stretched my technical proficiency. It's quite a bit more difficult than the original Playford variations, which aren't easy either, but it's very effective as a duet (or a trio if you add the guitar).



Martin