Carlo Cecere (c. 1750): Sonata in G Major - I. Moderato

[Martin Jonas]

Carlo Cecere (1706-1761): Sonata in Sol Maggiore per mandolino e basso
I. Moderato

This is a Baroque sonata for mandolin and continuo, which I have played as a trio of two mandolins and mandocello. The second mandolin part is taken from the harpsichord realisation of the basso part in the 1977 edition by Wilhelm Krumbach (available from trekel.de). This is the first movement (moderato) -- there is also a largo and a final brief allegro section, which I am still working on.

Cecere was a mid-18th century composer from Naples who wrote operas as well as instrumental music for flutes, violins and mandolins. There are a number of surviving mandolin compositions -- I have in the past recorded the Sinfonia for two mandolins, and there is also a well-known concerto in A, with a number of good performances on Youtube. This sonata seems to be somewhat overlooked, with only one prior performance on Youtube (a badly-recorded student concert), but it's a lot of fun!

1890s Umberto Ceccherini mandolin
Mid-Missouri M-0W mandolin
Suzuki MC-815 mandocello



Martin

[Billy Packard]

Hi Martin!

The mandolin in that photo shows some fantastic artistry and craftsmanship. I love all the photos

Thanks again for the Mezzacapo material. We will get into it in earnest after the new year. BTW, we performed, Mezzacapos' "Response Aux Reves Amoureux," (or Respond to the Dreams of Love) Friday night to close the talk by Alexis Alrich who spoke on composition. Alexis and I have been playing several times a week for 4+ months, having a blast, and creating arrangements of these great tunes as well as originals by both of us. She is a fabulous pianist and composer who began at age 8 and never let up!

Keep on picking Martin, it sounds great!


Billy

billypackardmandolin.com

[Martin Jonas]

Carlo Cecere (1706-1761): Sonata in Sol Maggiore per mandolino e basso
II. Largo 0:00
III. Allegro 1:48

Further to my posting of the first movement of the Cecere Sonata in G, I have now got around to also recording the Largo and Allegro movements. Same instrumentation as before. The Largo in particular is really fun to play, and a wonderfully light tune.



Martin

[Martin Jonas]

I've been looking online for more on Cecere's mandolin compositions, and have noticed that there appears to be a set of 26(!) mandolin duets sitting in an unpublished manuscript at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, as shown in this catalogue entry:

http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb395812943

The title is given as "Divertimenti à Due Mandolini Del Sig.r // Carlo Cecere [Musique manuscrite]", with 47 pages. As there is an index with a list of the 26 pieces, with individual tempo markings and page number in the manuscript, there seems little doubt that these pieces do indeed exist and are contained in this manuscript. They are not, however, available either as scans from BnF or IMSLP, or in modern transcriptions or editions. That is somewhat surprising as Cecere's mandolin compositions are otherwise pretty well covered with modern editions by various prominent names in mandolin academia (there are editions of Cecere pieces at least by Wilden-Hüsgen, Behrend, Krumbach, Monti, Orlandi and Ahlert). The published pieces include the concerto in A, the Sonata in G (as per my recordings in this thread, from the Krumbach edition), the Sonata in F, the Sinfonia in G and the Divertimento di camera (which is from a different BnF manuscript to the mandolin duos).

So, does anybody know why his mandolin duos have slipped through the net? Are they no good, illegible, missing a part, or otherwise not what they appear to be from the catalogue?

I note that one can order a PDF scan of the manuscript for EUR 32.90 through the BnF website -- I'm not sure I am sufficiently motivated at this stage to order this blind without knowing whether the manuscript is at all readable, but maybe a Master student at some music college somewhere is just itching to get their hand on this for their research...

I would think that once scanned, the scans would be in the public domain (no copyright on facsimiles), so could be placed on IMSLP or here for anybody to try their hand.

Martin

[Eugene]

Interesting . . .

[margora]

"I've been looking online for more on Cecere's mandolin compositions, and have noticed that there appears to be a set of 26(!) mandolin duets sitting in an unpublished manuscript at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, as shown in this catalogue entry:

http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb395812943

The title is given as "Divertimenti à Due Mandolini Del Sig.r // Carlo Cecere [Musique manuscrite]", with 47 pages."

These pieces are definitely known, see p. 160 of Tyler and Sparks, The Early Mandolin. I agree with Martin that there does not seem to be a modern edition.

[margora]

And the Cecere pieces are also mentioned on p. 11 of Konrad Wolki's History of the Mandolin; the citation is to the 1984 English language edition by Plucked String (translation by Keith Harris). I don't have a copy of the original, which was published just before WW2, but I am guessing that the reference was present back in 1939, which makes the absence of a current modern edition even stranger.

[Martin Jonas]

Thanks for that, Robert. Yes, I agree it's strange as Cecere is generally well-regarded and as far as I can see all his other mandolin pieces have been published and remain in print through Trekel. I suspect there is a problem with the manuscript: the pieces may be unpublishable.

Martin