Mandolin Guitar duet suggestions!

[Barry Canada]

I am looking for interesting mandolin guitar suggestions? Any suggestions are welcome!
I could handle most levels of music and prefer Intermediate to advanced repertoire.
Thanks, Barry

[Jim Garber]

Have you checked out all the published music of Rafaele Calace? Here are the Mandolin-Guitar duets.

There are lots more mando-centric sheet music, some for free and some for sale here.

[crisscross]

Musiques populaires bréziliennes by Celso Machado was originally written for flute and guitar, but works well on the mandolin too.
https://www.amazon.com/Musiques-popu...=celso+machado


Piazolla's Histoire du tango also works as a guitar-mandolin duet

I guess for both collections exist violin editions that may be a little more helpful for mandolin than the original flute editions.

[ajh]

Peter Ostroushko and Dean Magraw album "Duo"

[Martin Jonas]

Try this wonderful free archive site of PDFs of old Italian guitar and mandolin music:

Biblioteca della chitarra e del mandolino

Most of this is classical guitar, but there are a lot mandolin and guitar duets as well. No good search function, so you'll need to spend some time browsing for appealing pieces.

IMSLP does have some mandolin and guitar duets as well: here are their index pages for that instrumentation:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:For_guitar,_mandolin
http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:For_g...mandolin_(arr)

If you're a CMSA member, you can also browse the Nakano archive at their website, which has hundreds of mandolin and guitar duets.

Good luck!

Martin

[JeffD]

I would recommend this, if you are interested in do-able classical that will sound good right away.

https://www.amazon.com/Cantabile-But.../dp/B00000DI36

[Beanzy]

You could have a look at the freebie "Wonky Waltz" on astute music's guitar & mandolin collection.

https://www.astute-music.com/store/c...26_guitar.html

[fatt-dad]

My duo is working on the Bach Inventions, which were written for harpsichord. I play the right hand and he plays the left hand. These are great fun and pretty accessible to the sporting amateur!

We also work up the music of O'Carolan, but that's a bit off topic for this forum category. Great for duets though!

f-d

[JeffD]

I would also strongly recommend this:

http://www.ecrater.com/p/20002485/a-...ntroduction-by

If I understand correctly, Hugo d'Alton was one of Alison Stephens teachers.

It contains several mandolin/guitar duets, as well as mandolin duets and solo mandolin. A fun book.

[margora]

"I am looking for interesting mandolin guitar suggestions? Any suggestions are welcome!
I could handle most levels of music and prefer Intermediate to advanced repertoire."

There is a very large literature for mandolin and classical guitar (I am assuming classical, because otherwise why would you ask here?). It would be helpful to know more about your specific preferences -- for example, period, length, style, and so on -- and also whether the interest is casual or for performance purposes. Here are some general things to keep in mind.

--for the baroque period, guitar parts will be arranged from the continuo. Whether these are successful or not varies with the arranger. There are published arrangements of good quality of works by Denis, Gervasio Leone, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, and a few others that are often performed.

--for ca. 1800 there are a few original works for mandolin and guitar (Bertolazzi, Gragnani, von Call) plus several decent arrangements of the Beethoven works originally for mandolin and fortepiano.

--for ca. 1880-1920, there are innumerable pieces, most of which are very poor in general, or have very poor guitar parts. There are, however, a few pieces by Calace and Munier which can be recommended, and which are included in the repertoires of professional duos (see below).

--for the modern (post-1950) period, the repertoire is very large, and expanding all of the time. Styles vary dramatically, from very avante-garde to "new age" and everything in between. It would be far easier to give advice on contemporary works if you could narrow down the stylistic preference (also length).

--currently, the major publishers of music for mandolin and guitar are Trekel (www.trekel.de), Edition49 (www.edition49.de), Vogt&Fritz, Astute Music (in England), and Les Productions d'Oz (in Canada). There are also a few smaller publishers in Italy and Spain (and Japan, although the Japanese publishers are very difficult to access outside of Japan). All of these, to varying degrees, have sample pages for you to look at on line.

Here are also some comments on the advice you have received thus far from others:

"Have you checked out all the published music of Rafaele Calace? Here are the Mandolin-Guitar duets."

Calace wrote many duos, most for mandolin and piano, which were then arranged for mandolin and guitar. It is not known if he did the guitar arrangements. While Calace wrote original music for guitar, the guitar parts in the original published (or manuscript) versions of his mandolin and guitar duos are often problematic and usually require editing, sometimes considerable. Professional duos generally prefer their own editions to the free on-line versions to which you were referred. Of the various Calace pieces, "Rondo" and "Bolero" are often performed; I personally like the "Polonese" in the edition by Annika and Fabian Hinsche (published by Trekel).

"Musiques populaires bréziliennes by Celso Machado was originally written for flute and guitar, but works well on the mandolin too."

Whether it works well is in the ear of the listener and also depends greatly on the skill of the performer. Personally I prefer the Machado and (most definitely) the Piazzolla on the instrument for which they were originally written. That said, most professional mandolin-guitar duos play the Piazzolla. The Castelnuovo-Tedesco sonatina for guitar and flute is also fairly popular on guitar and mandolin.

"Try this wonderful free archive site of PDFs of old Italian guitar and mandolin music:

Biblioteca della chitarra e del mandolino

Most of this is classical guitar, but there are a lot mandolin and guitar duets as well. No good search function, so you'll need to spend some time browsing for appealing pieces."

Tastes do vary. The pieces here come from early 20th century Italian mandolin magazines, mostly. The guitar parts reflect the conventions of the time and setting. A modern classical guitarist could easily be bored more or less immediately (I play classical guitar as well as mandolin and would more or less refuse on the spot to play any of this music, especially in public). If you find, however, that you like this sort of thing, I would recommend modern editions by Sergio Ziggioti and Fabiano Merlante published by Armelin Musica. For performance purposes a little (very little) goes a long way.

"IMSLP does have some mandolin and guitar duets as well: here are their index pages for that instrumentation:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:For_guitar,_mandolin
http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:For_g...mandolin_(arr)"

Some of the Munier works here are standard repertoire in the sense of being widely played by professional duos. "Capriccio Spagnuolo", "Bizzarria", and "Valzer Concerto" are commonly played (or over-played, depending on one's point of view). The guitar parts here have some of the same faults as others from the turn of the century and often can use some editing.

"I would recommend this, if you are interested in do-able classical that will sound good right away.

https://www.amazon.com/Cantabile-But.../dp/B00000DI36"

I disagree, except perhaps for very casual gigs or sight-reading. The edition does have the merit of being cheap and easily obtainable in the US.

"My duo is working on the Bach Inventions, which were written for harpsichord. I play the right hand and he plays the left hand. These are great fun and pretty accessible to the sporting amateur!"

A major problem in performing the Bach inventions or any harpsichord music on mandolin and guitar is that the timbres of the mandolin and classical guitar obviously differ considerably, and this alters the character of the music completely. Harpsichord music on two guitars works much better.

[Jim Garber]

I agree, Robert, that many times the arrangements for mandolin and guitar give guitarists the short shrift. The problem is to find the better arrangements without being able to take a look before buying.

[Dan Cohen]

The book, as mentioned above, CANTABILE by Butch Baldassari and John Mock got me started on guitar mandolin duets. Fabulous book with quite a few pieces from easier to more difficult but all beautiful. I liked it so much that I went on Craig's List to find a guitar partner. We since put together a nice repertoire of duets including some from the book.

Not mentioned here yet is a nice piece by Victor Kioulaohides that we enjoy playing, CANZONA. http://trekel.de/en/27279-canzona.html. As far as I know it has not been recorded but I've seen it played by Carlo Alonzo (who it was written for) and Renee Izquierdo.

Our go to piece was the already mentioned TRES NOTTURNI by Filipo Gragnani http://www.noten-petroll.de/de/produ...hitarra?page=1. I think it's also available on Sheet Music Plus. Here's Carlo and Renee playing it. https://youtu.be/A4Z1zC1fbuM. Not difficult (wonderful) to play and gets interesting with the phrasing and dynamics one chooses. Lots of ad lib moments.

I've got more.

[Barry Canada]

I thank all of you for your suggestions. These give me a great starting point. Lots to explore!

[nateroberts]

Hi Barry,

I've done a similar search myself, and I often decided the easiest thing was to just look for duets I liked, regardless of the instrument they were written for, as criss cross and fatt-dad both recommended. If the guitar play is comfortable with bass clef, Bach's inventions, or really most keyboard music are great. The counterpoint can be a little diluted, since you're moving the left-hand part up an octave, but they're usually still brilliant. The French Suites are some of my favorite pieces to start with.

Violin duets are also a possibility (and in this case one of the violin parts goes down an octave), and some to start with might be:

Bartok - 44 Duets for Violin
Beriot - 3 Duos Concertants
Prokofiev - Sonata for 2 Violins
Reger - 3 Canons and Fugues for 2 Violins
Telemann - 6 Sonatas for 2 Violins
Ysaye - Duo Sonata

Some pretty stylistically diverse options. You could obviously get into repertoire for guitar and violin too, though it's not much better than looking for guitar and mandolin sometimes. You could try music by Paganini, Giuliani, Rode, Molino, Carulli, Burgmuller. You might just browse this imslp category:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:For_guitar,_violin

There are duets written for so many different instruments that you might just throw out a line and see if anything bites. Two flutes, for example:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:For_2_flutes

The nice thing about this approach is that you'll likely find some music that has rarely, if ever, been played with your instrumentation, and that will bring a new perspective to the piece itself as well. Thanks,

[crisscross]

I agree, Robert, that many times the arrangements for mandolin and guitar give guitarists the short shrift.

Almost everytime I read here, I learn a new idiom.
A collection that cares a little more for guitar players is 19 Classics for Flute and Guitar by Jerry Snyder. https://www.amazon.com/Classics-Flut...r+flute+guitar
It features 19 nice arrrangements for guitar and any melody instrument with a certain tonal range.
The guitar parts are intermediate and almost every piece has a littlle solo for the guitar.
With some adjustments, these arrangements even work for cello and classical guitar.

This Pavane sounds good on mandolin too, as the Kerman Quartet proves.

So I guess, on the mandolin you can play pieces that were originally written for other instruments.
It's more difficult finding a guitar arrangement that is playable, yet somewhat intricate.
That's where for my taste, Jerry Snyder succeeded.

[Bill McCall]

Tim Connell's group Rio Con Brio is Mando/guitar. Don't know of any transcriptions but great music.

[crisscross]

Speaking of other duos, Marissa Carroll and Joel Woods have a large repertoire.
For example the Sonata in D bei Scheidler.

You might find some hints in the comments to their videos.

[Eugene]

Calace wrote many duos, most for mandolin and piano, which were then arranged for mandolin and guitar. It is not known if he did the guitar arrangements. While Calace wrote original music for guitar, the guitar parts in the original published (or manuscript) versions of his mandolin and guitar duos are often problematic and usually require editing, sometimes considerable. Professional duos generally prefer their own editions to the free on-line versions to which you were referred. Of the various Calace pieces, "Rondo" and "Bolero" are often performed; I personally like the "Polonese" in the edition by Annika and Fabian Hinsche (published by Trekel).

In some cases, Calace also set a guitar part in an altogether different ensemble: e.g., quartetto romantico. I love the Calace repertoire, but to approach as mandolin–guitar duet, I typically arrange the guitar part myself, usually with the piano accompaniment (if it exists) as a starting point, but maybe incorporating guitaristic bits I like from other settings (if they exist).

And thank you, Robert, for giving your focus to original mandolin music.