Java Song (Siegfried Behrend)

[Martin Jonas]

Siegfried Behrend (1933-1990):
"Indonesische Miniaturen" (Indonesian Miniatures)
III. Java Song

This is the third movement of a short suite for mandolin orchestra, written by Siegfried Behrend based on Indonesian folk tunes, in this case a delicate song from Java. Sheet music is available from Trekel.de.

I have recorded this movement in a mandolin quartet configuration, playing very softly:

1915 Luigi Embergher mandolin
1890s Umberto Ceccherini mandolin
Mid-Missouri M-111 octave mandolin
Ozark tenor guitar



Martin

[vkioulaphides]

Could easily serve as Programmers' Anthem.

Quite a find, Martin! You are ever the keen treasure-hunter, and we are all the richer for your efforts. Thank you!

Cheers,

Victor

[Martin Jonas]

Quite a find, Martin! You are ever the keen treasure-hunter, and we are all the richer for your efforts. Thank you!

Thanks, Victor!

I enjoy hunting around for material that's within my skill range and seeing how they translate from the sheet to actual music. This one is a rather exotic tune, but it makes a really nice understated quartet piece. For what it's worth, the other movements in this suite of Indonesian miniatures are "Prelude From Borneo", "Song From Celebes" and "Dance From Bali".

Siegfried Behrend was an interesting figure in German mandolin music. He was one of the world's leading classical guitarists in the 1960s and 1970s and at the same time was the musical director of the Saarland Mandolin Orchestra (then Germany's leading mandolin orchestra) and Trekel's main composer and arranger of mandolin music after their split with Konrad Woelki as well as a leading academic figure in early music in Germany. Most of his mandolin pieces were written or arranged for the Saarland orchestra, including the Indonesian suite (the score has a dedication to the orchestra). A lot of the Trekel editions of 18th century mandolin music were edited by Behrend, and he was in large part responsible for bringing this lost repertoire into print and into the mandolin world's concert repertoire. There's a fairly extensive website (in German) dedicated to his memory, with a lot of archive video and audio recordings: Link.

Martin

[Martin Jonas]

There's a fairly extensive website (in German) dedicated to his memory, with a lot of archive video and audio recordings: Link.

One of the videos linked may be of wider interest in this forum: a 30-minute TV documentary from 1971, dubbed into English, showing Behrend working with the German Plucked Orchestra (which evolved out of the earlier Saarland orchestra), with Takashi Ocho on first mandolin. Interesting to see the repertoire they were working on and the mandolins they were playing then, just before the development of the modern German bowlback by Seiffert et al. Several of the mandolinists (including Ocho) have taken half their string off and are playing single-string courses, and to my surprise there are also some of the Markneukirchen-style semi-flat mandolins which I didn't think were ever considered suitable for serious musicians. There is virtually no tremolo being played, which may explain the single strings.

Part 1:



Part 2:



Martin