Looking for music for mandolin quartet

[Chip Booth]

I have a couple of opportunities coming up in the near future to record with a special quartet of instruments. I am completely open to any style of music, it doesn't have to be classical. The other option is that we can (and would prefer) to substitute an octave mandolin for a second mandolin, so the quartet will consist of mandolin, mandola, OM and mandocello.

We are all decent but not particularly accomplished classical players, so honestly the easier the better! Does anyone have some suggestions for music, or even arrangements that already been made?

[jdyoungca]

There is a lot of renaissance and medieval music scored in SATB format that would be ideal for the line up you are talking about. You'd want to substitute the OM for that to do the tenor parts. I've recorded several pieces in that style on my own which can be heard here:

http://www.soundclick.com/members/de...tion&id=929350

I used a regular mandolin for the soprano and alto parts, an octave mandolin for the tenor and a 6 string acoustic guitar for the bass. Mandola and Mandocello would sound better on the alto and bass parts but sadly I don't have either at this point.

I have links to quite a bit of sheet music already arranged in this style but I'll have to find them for you when I get home (at work atm). Let me know if you are interested and I'll post what I can find.

Jeff

[Jim Garber]

Check out the following:

Gutenberg Project

International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)

Werner Icking Archives

There was the Nakano site which, I believe is no longer accessible. This was a collection in Japan of mandolin music. I prob have downloaded most of what was on that site and if you want I can look and see what would be appropriate.

FMI (Italian Mandolin org) has some mandolin sheet music, notably works by Raffaele Calace. The link marked Quartetto Romantico will lead you to works for 2 mandolins, octave mandolin (called mandola) and guitar. There may be some simpler ones there. Quartetto Classico is for 2 mandolins, octave mandolin (mandola) and liuto (5 string mandocello). There is some other music free for download here.

Michael Reichenbach of mandoisland.de has a nice list of sheet music links.

[JeffD]

Many of Beethoven's, Mozart's, Haydn's or Shubert's string quartets are very do-able. And several that are more challenging have maybe one or two easier movements.

Anything written for fiddle...

[Jim Garber]

There is some mandolin music on Mutopia.org including a few quartets.

Aside from std string quartets, one other possibility is to arrange piano music in four parts. Often that makes for pretty simple arrangements.