The Song Inside
Dear mandolinist friends around the world,
I hope you and yours are staying healthy and happy during these difficult times. The consolations of music have never been more precious or more sorely needed…
A couple of years ago, I was graciously approached by the Concorso Musicale per Strumenti a Pizzico Estudiantina Bergamasca in Bergamo, Italy, asking whether I would be willing to compose a work for unaccompanied mandolin to be used as required competition piece at that illustrious event, specifically by the junior division, the younger contestants. Needless to say, I was delighted to accept immediately. So much of my work as a composer has been intended for the young (including the young at heart ) that this request seemed to fit my outlook on life and music like a glove.
The outcome was a short piece titled The Song Inside as it quite literally holds inside it as musical core an 18th-century French folk song I once heard at one of those myriad concerts I have played over half a century— quite magical, how music enters the soul as if by osmosis, subconsciously, unnoticed at the time, only to emerge much, much later, often in a whole other guise. This piece was never meant to be any “lesser" than my other works, those intended for adults; the only thing that makes it youth-specific is a deliberate limitation in the range of technique, the breadth of the skill-set required.
I was just as delighted to hear that my friend and colleague, Dutch mandolinist Alex Timmerman had just recorded and posted on YouTube his own, absolutely lovely performance of this little piece. Beyond the overall beauty of his playing, Alex succeeds in truly putting himself in the composer’s position; he visualizes musically how I sat down with my mandolin and improvised on that old, soulful melody, finding my way. Once I was satisfied with some of those many different paths that I followed in my improvisations, I just wrote the best ones down and that became, well… the composition.
I share with you this performance, hoping you enjoy it as much as I have. As is my usual practice, the score is yours for the asking; please feel free to zap me a message through the Café's board, giving me your email address, and I will gladly reply with the score as a PDF attachment, entirely gratis.
Stay well and keep plucking!
Cheers,
Victor
It is not man that lives but his work. (Ioannis Kapodistrias)
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