Re: Le Cygne
I posted more extensive comments in the “Exploring Classical Mandolin” group, but will summarize here in case it’s helpful to anyone else:
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Such a beautifully-thought out adaptation! It falls very naturally and idiomatically on the mandolin fingerboard. Thanks for posting, Eugene, and I hope you post more of these!
I find the choice of fingerings and positions very clear throughout. However this does require some familiarity with duo-style playing, so there are some places where it might be good to include redundant fingerings—just to help avoid blind alleys. For example, since it helps to keep double-stops on adjacent courses: In measure 2 beat 4, the melody could be tremoloed on the open E, but I find this much easier to play shifting to third position, with the E on the second course, second finger. This is the sort of thing you discover from working on duo-style, but since so many people are coming from different backgrounds, I try to include a few extra fingerings, for clarity. Often I write in a fingering, wherever a position shift occurs.
I would interpret the three-downstrokes-plus-upstroke in the first measure as three rest strokes plus an up. Which to my ear would not flow as smoothly as a more Beethoven-esque D-D-U-U (rest-free-up-up). Same thing with the last few measures.
Eugene, you mention you wrote this as background music to a wedding, but I think this is also good as a concert music piece. Usually I prefer to program mostly music composed for mandolin, but audiences also love to hear familiar melodies, set to beautiful textures. Looking back over old concert programs (such as those summarized in The Crescendo), it appears a lot of mandolinists have used this approach!
Exploring Classical Mandolin (Berklee Press, 2015)
Progressive Melodies for Mandocello (KDP, 2019) (2nd ed. 2022)
New Solos for Classical Mandolin (Hal Leonard Press, 2020)
2021 guest artist, mandocello: Classical Mandolin Society of America
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