Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata...

[grandmainger]

I'd love to play the Moonlight Sonata on the mandolin, but I'm finding it very difficult to come up with a half decent arrangement... Anybody managed anything?
I heard one guy play it on a guitar late one evening in the London Underground, and it was lovely.
http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mandosmiley.gif
Germain

[Jim Garber]

I took a quick look at this arrangement of the Moonlight Sonata (http://www.partiture.org/content.pl?bethoven). It is for guitar. I would imagine that you might need to transpose it up to avoid that low E and F note.

Youy may want to look at the piano piece and see how it lays on the mandolin in various keys.

It would be great to do it as a duo-style solo but I am not sure exactly how.

Jim

[Jonathan]

Personally, I think that even if you managed to come up with a great arrangement that covered as many of the notes as possible, it would still lack the "gravitas" of the piece as played on the piano, or even the guitar. #The mandolin is just too high in pitch for a piece that requires a real bass line and darkly-voiced chords to create its brooding atmosphere. But hey, I'm open to being proved wrong!

Jonathan

[dfxlr]

I agree. It would be difficult to get it just right on such a high and twinkly instrument as mandolin.

However, perhaps you could purposely play it "bright" and fast and with a few changes in the keys and turn it to "moonshine" sonata!

tempting.

[Songbird]

Yeah, I've tried transcribing it a couple of times and it's certainly a challenge to try and put some fizz into it. I think playing as many open strings as possible to give it a ring may help. I'd be interested to hear anyone who can get this to work on the mandolin.

[Bob A]

Wonder how it would sound on the world's only Hardanger Mandolin?

[FrDNicholas]

Wasn't Bill Monroe known for his "high twinkly" sound?

[an uncalloused fingertip]

I read that Beethoven owned and played a mandolin himself. I wonder if he eventually smashed it - with that temper of his http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/rock.gif . Haven't yet tried the sonatinas he wrote for the instrument, yet I enjoy playing certain sections of his symphonies - especially the 2nd.

Rook

[Eugene]

I read that Beethoven owned and played a mandolin himself.
This notion might have originated in Philip J. Bone (1914) whose work can be considered a little "speculative" at times. #Bone went so far as to picture a 6-string Lombardian mandolin as "Beethoven's mandolin." #The instrument itself looks to be of a type that wasn't built until a comfortable half century after Beethoven's death.

[an uncalloused fingertip]

From what I read, it was an instrument he played and composed for when he was younger - when he was in his twenties. And supposedly he was friends with a few amateur mandolin players - as well as a (female) patron who played the mandolin. Obviously with the deterioration of his hearing, the mandolin would have been one of the first instruments he discontinued playing, along with its mechanical nature and limited range.Have you ever seen that famous drawing of him at the piano, with his window open at night, composing with sheets of paper on top of his piano with just a single taper burning? And in the foreground, there was a cello resting against an easy chair. I wonder if he ever touched the cello in real life. I know that he, for a time in youth, played a viola in an orchestra. It's fascinating to think of composers who could play instruments from different families-and sometimes play more than one instrument well. Many of us would be happy to play just one instrument halfway decently. I wonder if Beethoven ever played any of his piano sonatas on the harpsichord, which by his time pretty much out of use.

Rook

[Eugene]

Beethoven's extant mandolin pieces were dedicated to Lady Clary and written in Prague in the very late 18th c. Plamen has excerpted the writings of Caterina Lichtenberg at the top of this page (http://www.mandolincafe.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=6;t=11266;st=225). Check it out...and the discussion to follow.

[Ted Eschliman]

Wasn't Bill Monroe known for his "high twinkly" sound?
LvB: "That ain't no Große Sonate für das Hammerklavier...
I don't like it."

[Songbird]

Just wanted to bump this up as someone else had posted about it. I've had a crack and I think it's gradually getting somewhere. I've set it to D minor and it sounds quite nice with the note ringing out and you play it quite a bit faster than the original recording. Only thing I'm not sure about is the picking...if you pick it dudududu etc then you end up starting on some chords with an upstroke. Might be worth using dudduddu instead?

[John Zimm]

Only thing I'm not sure about is the picking...if you pick it dudududu etc then you end up starting on some chords with an upstroke. Might be worth using dudduddu instead?
What mighty battles can ensue from a simple question such as this. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

I have recently been converted to the theory that you must do what is best to execute the piece. Having not examined the whole score, I would not take my advice as the last word on the subject, but if I were playing this piece I would tend to use the DUD DUD pattern.

-John.

[Eugene]

The rolling triplet accompaniment figure is so very slow, you should be able to use all downstrokes unless you want to deemphasize a note for effect.

There's plenty of pretty cool music that was specifically composed to work well on mandolin too. Check it out some time.

[John Eichenberger]

Haven't yet tried the sonatinas he wrote for the instrument
Speaking of the sonatinas, does anyone know where I can find more than Grisman's excerpt of the sonatina in C? #Tab or notation, I'm not particular.

[Jim Garber]

I assume that you mean the Sonatina in C Major?

You can find a downloadable version here (http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/MandolinSonatina.html?keyword=mandolin)

I bought all four pieces he wrote for mandolin with piano accompaniment in the Henle urtext edition which you can buy here (http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/pages.html?cart=33608703619793503&target=smp_detail.html%26sku%3DHE.499&s=pages-www.google.com/search&e=/sheetmusic/detail/HE.499.html&t=&k=&r=wwws-err5)

Jim