O Holy Night

[Eugene]

Yeah, it's been a while. Here's something I fired off rather quickly just because it's seasonally appropriate and I like romantic-era repertoire. This is a duo-style arrangement: i.e., play most of the upstems in tremolo (not the triplets) and single stroke all the downstems. I don't tremolo the 16ths and used the legato sign to indicate where I allow a note to ring without tremolo. If you try, please do feel free to offer some criticism.

[Bruce Clausen]

Thanks, Eugene, this looks great! Children asleep here now, so I can't try it till morning, but will give it a go tomorrow. Looks like it should sound terrific in the hands of a good tremolo player (not me). Thanks for all the detail in rhythm and fingering.

I bet a number of us would be very glad to hear your own performance of it, if you can be talked into making a recording or video.

[Eugene]

Thanks, Bruce. My biggest impediment is a lack of recording hardware. I'm feeling that handicap and hope to rectify soon.

[nateroberts]

This is lovely Eugene! I enjoyed giving it a shot, thanks for sharing.

[bratsche]

Eugene - I can imagine how that sounds - beautiful! It looks very similar to an arrangement I made and played at our Christmas Eve service on mandola (in C, of course!), only I used no tremolo - I had a young lady playing the melody on a soprano recorder, and her husband with a nice bass line on cello. I love this piece!

bratsche

[Eugene]

I love this piece!

Me too! Thanks for looking in on this little effort.

[lex-joe]

Eugene, thanks for posting, really like this, do you know where I could find more arrangements like this one?

[Eugene]

Well, in part in my own notebook. Kidding aside, this arrangement is pretty typical of mandolin solo material spanning the late 1800s to early 1900s. Two volumes of the Pettine method are dedicated to duo style and largely arrangements of popular ca. 1900 tunes. If you can find them, they're worthy of a bit of perusal. The Calace solos are also worth a look, but those are more substantial and pretty much all original material, not arrangements.

[lex-joe]

Thanks Eugene, I will see if I can find them

[Eugene]

I've ever so slightly revised the attached (to add a little split-string harmony in places where practical and avoid some jangly sounding open strings in chordal tremolo). I'm hoping to try to record and share audio sometime this season.