OK, last one (for now ;-)
Dear friends,
while I occasionally get the nagging feeling that I'm "flooding the market", I just can't keep the music from flowing... OK, then: here is my last tidbit-- at least for this season, as we leave on vacation in a few weeks.
http://www.paperclipdesign.com/vk/
[Posted, as always, courtesy of Jim's boundless generosity.]
The new piece is the last one listed, Studio a quattro. It is a study in four "voices" (in the technical, contrapuntal sense of the term): the main melody is in the middle, on the D and A courses; it is accompanied by two lower, harmonic, arpeggiated voices, and "peppered" from above by a descant, an upper voice that "comments" on the melody and/or counter-balances the lower voices. This does not mean, of course, that ALL four voices are sounding at any point, all at the same time-- that would have been an insufferably dense, heavy texture IMHO. But if you break down the patterns into registers (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass) and follow the figuration, you will surely hear the four voices involved-- all four for the "price" of one, four-in-one-mandolin!
This sort of polyphonic playing is, of course, the daily bread of organists, pianists, and (increasingly so over the past decades) guitarists, too. So, I composed this little tidbit in order to encourage mandolinists to think in such complex, rich, contrapuntal terms as well. Such musical skills would then foster a "deeper" reading of the monumental scores of e.g. J. S. Bach, whose works for one, unaccompanied instrument virtually always involve such "composite melodies". I humbly aim to aid, NOT to match!
Come to think of it...... some extraordinarily pro-active individual(s) may consider concocting a "Student Sonatina" for mandolin, by starting with this, most recent study, following and contrasting it with Apres de Beriot as a slow-ish "second movement" of sorts, then finishing with the flourish of Studio Fiorillesco. All three are in G-major, so harmonic coherence won't be an issue; all three blur the line between "original" composition (which these can hardly be said to be) and arrangement (although only the chordal study is candidly after a specific, pre-existing study of de Beriot). All I am claiming is that this may be a valid, ad hoc combination into a "student concert-piece", a genre in and of itself. There were lots, and lots, and LOTS of such pieces composed over the past few centuries...
Enjoy!
Victor
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