Rags, Riffs & Reveries

[vkioulaphides]

Dear mandolin friends around the world,

I am delighted to share with you all a work of mine titled Rags, Riffs & Reveries, commissioned last year by my friends Barbara and Joseph Blumenthal in centennial celebration and commemoration of Barbara's 1916 Gibson A. It was premiered yesterday evening in lovely (if also frozen over) New England; my only regret is that my work prevented me from attending what must have surely been a joyous occasion.

This piece echoes American music, popular at the time Barbara’s mandolin was built, flanked as it were by the style of the eras right before and right after that: the current musical fashion was edgy ragtime, preceded by the maudlin sentimentality and homeliness of fin-de-siecle parlor songs and leading up to all the spunk and vigor of nascent swing, pushing relentlessly forward into the ‘30s and ‘40s.

So I am happy to share the score and parts of this piece in the hope that you, too, may get to enjoy it. It is scored for two mandolins, guitar, and double bass. The odd-numbered movements are dances from that most vibrant, colorful era, scored for the full quartet, while the even-numbered movements are interludes for mandolin and bass alone. I never care for over-analysis; just imagine stepping into the sets of Woody Allen’s Café Society…

As always, if interested, please just zap me a message here, giving me your email address, and I will promptly reply with the score and parts as PDF docs.

Warm greetings to you all from icy New York,

Victor

[Christopher Stetson]

Thanks for sharing this, Victor. I play with Joe and Barbara, and was pleased to be at the World Premiere of your work last night in South Hadley, MA. It's a lovely work.

-Chris.

[vkioulaphides]

Thanks, Chris! It's all in good fun— the foot-stomping, strumming and thumping sort of fun.

I'm glad you enjoyed the piece and hope to have a chance to hear it myself someday.

Cheers,

Victor

[Christopher Stetson]

Yes, it is fun! I believe I saw some recording equipment there, but it might have just been a boosting sound system. I'm an electronic infant, but you should ask Barbara and Joe. We actually tried to play it with the big group, and I worked up the guitar part, but that was not to be.

[vkioulaphides]

Yes, there was in fact a recording of the performance, and Barbara was kind enough to share it with me via email. I am not at liberty to circulate it of course but I can gladly say that it was a very nice and spirited rendition. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

And yes, even though this piece was written for quartet, it can certainly be played with a somewhat larger ensemble at will. This is very straightforward, plain-spoken music...

Cheers,

Victor

[JeffD]

What a great name for a piece. One could make a whole festival out of that.

[vkioulaphides]

Thanks, Jeff.

The title was a bit of a work-in-progress. I had originally thought of an all-ragtime style for this piece but, as the work on the score progressed, I found myself fast-forwarding, so to speak, to the Swing Era, whose syncopated vigor certainly hailed from the clipped, ragged phrasing of ragtime. Then, as I was working on the slow movements, musing on some of those harmonic progressions in imaginary slow-motion replay, I realized that much of ragtime seemed to descend from the world of parlor song.

Now... I am not a music historian, so I cannot attest to it that what I heard in my "inner ear" is what actually happened in the evolution of American popular music. The fact that something seems to have come from something else doesn't prove, in and of itself, that it actually did. Observation and causation are in any case quite different; too many theories with too little sense or substance out there, and I surely don't care to add to them. I simply write music, period.

Anyhow, if anyone is willing to start up some plucked music festival by that title, I'm happy to waive my copyright.

Cheers,

Victor

[Martin Jonas]

So I am happy to share the score and parts of this piece in the hope that you, too, may get to enjoy it. It is scored for two mandolins, guitar, and double bass. The odd-numbered movements are dances from that most vibrant, colorful era, scored for the full quartet, while the even-numbered movements are interludes for mandolin and bass alone. I never care for over-analysis; just imagine stepping into the sets of Woody Allen’s Café Society…

As always, if interested, please just zap me a message here, giving me your email address, and I will promptly reply with the score and parts as PDF docs.

Many thanks for the scores, Victor!

I've put together a home recording of the second movement, "Parlor Song". As I don't play the double bass, I have played that part on mandocello instead (omitting the lower notes of the double stops that can't be played in 'cello tuning). It's a lovely melody and great exercise for tremolo playing.

I meant to play it on my own Gibson Ajr, but in the end preferred the tone of the Embergher. My mandolin celebrated its own centenary two years ago, having been made in 1915, so it's all period-appropriate.

1915 Luigi Embergher mandolin
Suzuki MC-815 mandocello



I'm working on the other duet interlude as well ("Romance"), but that's a bit harder -- the first stumble is the very first note as I'm not entirely sure how to play a g'' as a natural harmonic on mandolin...

Martin

[vkioulaphides]

Sweet playing and lovely imagery, Martin! Yup, that's the spirit of the era...

As for the quindicesima, the double-octave of any open string, it's located at the 5th fret. No worries at all.

Cheers,

Victor

[Martin Jonas]

Thanks, Victor!

Putting my physicist hat on, I should have been able to figure out the harmonics myself -- I was thinking of the 24th fret (which doesn't exist on the G string), but of course that's the same harmonics as on the 5th fret. Three quarter scale free string length rather than one quarter, but the same nodes.

Finding the harmonic is one thing, playing it cleanly on such a short scale instrument quite another. I've just tried and I can get the double octave to sound (pretty wimpishly) about one try out of four by plucking close to the bridge, but it's really hard to avoid the fundamental sounding as well. Needs a bit more practice...

Martin

[vkioulaphides]

Any time, Martin. In retrospect, I should make it a point to write "V" above such harmonics, specifying the fret. My bad.

I am no physicist but I certainly am a bass-player by profession— an instrument that's tuned on a daily basis by that very same harmonic, checked against the 12th of the adjacent string. So such things are second nature to me and I tend to forget they are not so for others. A teachable moment for myself...

As regards sonority, again, I must be curiously fortunate. My Calace, strung with a bronze Lenzner Consort set, rings clear and crystalline as a bell at all nodes; the experience others report is oddly unlike my own. But yes, you do need to pick closer to the bridge, as if plucking a note fingered at the 24th fret. That's also second nature for players of bowed strings.

Cheers,

Victor