Baroque keyboard dances (Bach, Telemann, Purcell, Graupner...)

[Martin Jonas]

This weekend, I've been spending time with a book that I've had for many years but that I had never really looked at. Around 2005, I ordered a very cheap sheet music book from a German online bookshop (Zweitausendeins) on the basis of its title "Early Dances". The catalogue description didn't make it very clear what precisely the contents or the instrumentation was, but as it was only three Euros and I was ordering something else already from the same shop, I ordered it anyway.

From the title, I was expecting a collection of renaissance dance music (Playford, Susato etc), probably arranged for recorders or similar as this seems to be the form of most early dance music collections. When I received it, I found that it was actually a volume from a series of piano editions titled "Piano Step-by-Step", published by "Könemann Music Budapest", and contained about 120 individual movements from mainly Baroque (but also a few Classical and even Romantic) keyboard dance suites, grouped by dance form, i.e. starting with ten-or-so allemandes through courantes, gigues, sarabandes etc. Beautifully typeset and in great print quality, but with minimal source references and no arranger/editor notes. Könemann appears to have been a relatively short-lived venture in the 1990s when Hungary had just opened up and had both low wages and highly-trained musicians, academics and printers, who produced outrageously cheap professional sheet music. At the time, I put the book aside as I don't play piano and it didn't seem to have any obvious use for the aspiring mandolinist.

Last week, I came across the book again by chance and as I've been playing a fair bit of Baroque music lately had a closer look at what a non-keyboard player can do with this piano edition. It became apparent that all of the pieces in the book were original keyboard pieces (mainly for harpsichord) and were effectively urtext editions, some well-known and many very obscure. Some of the pieces are hard to translate to mandolin without major rearrangement, but a fair number transfer very easily: they have one instrumental voice in the treble line which can be played on mandolin and another separate part with good voice leading in the bass line which can be played on mandocello, or alternatively on OM/bouzouki with an occasional octave transposition of the lowest bass notes.

That way, these Baroque dances are a useful source of duet material for mandolin with any of mandocello, OM, zouk or guitar.

Out of the 120 or so short pieces in the book, I've recorded nine this weekend on Mid-Missouri and zouk (tuned FCGD for easier translation of the bass clef parts): three by Bach, two each by Telemann and Purcell, one each by Graupner and Dandrieu.

1) Bach:

0:00 Sarabande in Bb (BWV 821/IV)
1:52 Bourree in F (BWV 820/III)
3:02 Minuets in Gm (BWV 822/V,VII)

These are all from Bach's keyboard suites, but not the better-known English and French suites. The Sarabande is an exception in my recordings as it has two separate complete voices in the right-hand keyboard part which I've translated into two mandolin parts, one on the Embergher and the other on the Mid-Missouri.



2) Telemann:

0:00 Gavotte in F (TWV 32:4)
1:23 Bourree in D minor (TWV 32:2)

I know nothing about these pieces other than that they are very nice indeed and fall well under the fingers -- the bourree in particular is good fun on mandolin and has a powerful bass rhythm.



3) Purcell:

Hornpipe in D minor (Z668)
Hornpipe in E minor (Z607/4), from "The Old Bachelor"

These were originally from different suites, but work well as one single piece transitioning straight from one to the other. The E minor hornpipe is also known as "Wells Humour" and appears under that name in the 1701 edition of Playford's Dancing Master.




4) Graupner:

Graupner is having a bit of a revival at the moment, after having languished in obscurity for centuries. His entire output, thousands of pieces, is in manuscript at the University Library in Darmstadt (where he was court composer in the early 18th century) and a small proportion of these manuscripts, including this charming Bourree in Bb, are available as free scans at IMSLP. Graupner's works have only just been catalogued in the last five years -- this one is GWV 856.



5) Dandrieu:

This is the "Gavotte en rondeau" -- quite a well-known piece in piano circles judging from the number of renditions on Youtube. Easy and fun to play on mandolin, although unlike the other pieces I've recorded the bass part is uninspiring, a continuous ostinato repeating the same two notes throughout.



Martin

[Martin Jonas]

Yesterday, I have explored some of the keyboard sarabandes from this collection and in particular those by Handel and by Corelli. This time, I've used the Embergher for all the mandolin parts, in duet with bouzouki.

1) Corelli -- Sarabandes in D minor and E minor (from the violin sonatas Op. 5):

I'm taking my chances here with the search engines in combining the words "Corelli" and "mandolin" and not talking about Greek islands...

As far as I can tell, these pieces are an exception to the concept of this book in that they are keyboard adaptations of two movements from the Corelli violin sonatas, originally for violin and continuo. It is not clear to me who adapted them for keyboard and whether this is a modern or a Baroque adaptation.

Both tunes are well-known and, unsurprisingly considering their violin origin, work perfectly well on mandolin. I have taken a somewhat different approach to each tune: for the D minor sarabande, the arrangement is mainly chordal and I've played it in a percussive and somewhat harpsichord-like manner, whereas for the E minor sarabande (starting at 1:33 in the video), there is a beautiful legato melody over an arpeggio realisation of the continuo, and it felt natural to play this a a slower tempo with an all-tremolo melody.



2) Handel: Sarabandes I&II from the Harpsichord Suite in D minor (HWV 448/IV-V)

This is entirely straightforward to adapt to mandolin, and falls really nicely under the fingers. The phrasing on the Sarabande II (starting at 2:35) in particular is a pure joy to play and sounds as if it's made for mandolin. A great practice piece, as a solo or as a duet.



Martin

[Martin Jonas]

Yesterday, I have explored some of the keyboard sarabandes from this collection and in particular those by Handel and by Corelli. This time, I've used the Embergher for all the mandolin parts, in duet with bouzouki.

1) Corelli -- Sarabandes in D minor and E minor (from the violin sonatas Op. 5):

Listening back to my Corelli recording on different speakers rather than the headphones I used for the original mix, I noticed that the bass arpeggios were far too low in the mix and were drowned out by the tremolo melody. I've changed the mix for better balance and I think it is more enjoyable this way. Also, I've swapped the order of the two sarabandes to start with the Em instead of the Dm -- the Dm works better as a coda.

Here is the remix of the Em on Soundcloud (with downloadable MP3):



Both Corelli sarabandes on Youtube:



I've also now uploaded the Graupner bourree from my first post to Soundcloud -- it's a short but sweet tune and a nice Baroque practice piece for mandolin:



Martin

[JEStanek]

Excellent! Thanks for posting these.

Jamie

[Martin Jonas]

As I enjoyed playing the Graupner bourree posted above, and as I didn't know anything about Graupner's music before, I've now had a go at the other two Graupner pieces in the same keyboard edition.

Christoph Graupner (1683-1760):

Sarabande in C minor (GWV 808)
Gavotte in G (GWV 146:4)

Graupner's compositions are archived at the University Library in Darmstadt (where he was the composer in residence for the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt), who have scanned much of it for free downloads. Thus, the images accompanying this video are the original manuscripts of the two pieces in the composer's own hand. They are written very clearly, so you can read along with them (and also see where the supposedly "urtext" edition I was using for my own arrangement differs from the manuscript -- the trills in the Sarabande are in quite different places ...). Took me a little while to find the right manuscripts as the archives are a bit difficult to search.

I have again recorded these as duets on mandolin and bouzouki (taking the bass line), played directly from a keyboard edition.

1915 Embergher mandolin
Troubadour Lionheart bouzouki (FCGD)



I may try a few more Graupner harpsichord pieces in future as I've just stumbled upon a PDF transcription of about 30 or so dance movements of his.

Martin