German romanticism or – Two voices, one mandolin

[Toomas Rannu]

I travelled in Germany last summer and bought a book of sheetmusic from a second hand bookshop in Munich at first as a souvenir - simple german folksongs and tunes of composers from the romantic era like Weber, Werner etc., for two violins. Later I found that these beautiful tunes are easily played on one mandolin. About last two months I’ve been recording these tunes in sequence and here is the playlist of first 25 tunes from this book named as “55 Zweistimmige Volkslieder zur Violinschule von Hohmann-Heim. Neuausgabe (Edition Gabriel, Oberholsten)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpDW...B&index=8&t=0s


Toomas Rannu
Flat-backed mandolin crafted by Viljar Kuusk in 2008 (Tallinn, Estonia)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg_...UaoCOpw/videos

[Martin Jonas]

Thanks, Toomas -- these sound great! You may already have seen my old thread on German folksong, featuring my recordings of several of the same tunes:

Link

I have not come across this edition for two violins. Looking online, there seem to be three used copies available for little money (EUR 6). I have to check it out!

There are a number of similar folk song editions for two voices -- when my children were litte, my (German) parents bought them a lovely book with about hundred well-known folk songs, all set as duets with melody and harmony parts, plus chords. I have recorded a number of arrangements from that book as mandolin duets, which works very nicely. There are a lot of wonderful German folksong melodies!

Martin

[Toomas Rannu]

Thank you, Martin for sharing the link. Seems that german folk music is an endless story and there's a lot beautiful music to play and interesting to discuss about.

[mandoisland]

Great job, Toomas! I enjoyed your videos. Great idea to play it on one mandolin. Nice and mellow sound!
Have you ever tried to play guitar music on the mandolin? Many pieces for guitar can also be played on a mandolin using finger technique like you do.

[Toomas Rannu]

Thank you Michael! My way of picking comes somehow from my background as a guitar player and I made a big step forward some years ago when I started to play german baroque violin music – Bach and Telemann. German baroque violin (and cello) music is famous for its chordal technique and I also feel that a lot of it sounds great on mandolin (I’liked to say that even better). Maybe guitar music will be the next step and thank you for encouraging me for doing that. Vielen dank!