Most of us will be aware of the "German School" of technique, characterised by angled downwards rest strokes, followed by a single-string up stroke, contrasted by 90 degrees to the string for scale passages and occasional tremolo beginning with either an up or down stroke as in this position up and down strokes sound the same, etc, etc.
And then there is the Roman school of Ranieri, who as far as I can tell does not mention angled picks or rest strokes (correct me if I am wrong), has tremolo as the normal stroke, with what look like staccato dots for not staccato but non-tremolo, and what look like tenuto marks (a short line above a note) not for tenuto, but for short bursts of tremolo, etc, etc.
Well, yesterday I was on Zoom with a friend, both of us looking at a duet by Mazas, which clearly had been marked up with Ranieri symbols. My friend had been studying with a teacher of the German school, while I am working through the Ranieri Method, now on the second of four books. Our interpretations were radically different. I was able to play all the technical notation as printed, while he had to find equivalents that were not the same. For instance, I played mostly tremolo, or not in the case of the dots above the notes, and he was angling and not angling his plectrum, not playing tremolo at all, and playing staccato for the dots above the notes.
Now, it is a nice duet in whatever technique was used, but - had we been able to play it together without latency - would have sounded decidedly odd, though perhaps curiously interesting. It raised aesthetic choices, using one school's technique to realise another school's repertoire.
But having listened to and observed many mandolinists online, professional and amateur, I see that there are some purists of each school, but many people have found their own mid-way technique, a bit of this, a bit of that, a sort of mongrel technique. The music usually sounds good, no matter what technique is used, though sometimes one approach clearly works better.
So if we see the German and Roman schools as being polar opposites, where would you say you belong on the line between them? Or would you use Ranieri technique for music he was associated with, for instance? Imagine Ranieri playing Bach - interesting but somewhat strange! Horses for courses? Do whatever you feel like doing at any give moment? All of our choices can radically change the perception of what is heard. Is this something you like, or does it drive you crazy?
Bookmarks