Bernardo de Pace: Sonatina No. 1

[Martin Jonas]

"Sonatina No. 1" is a nice little trio composition by Bernardo de Pace for two mandolins and guitar. It's in the 1975 Clifford Essex book "A Variety Of Mandolin Music", in which Hugo d'Alton had a hand -- his name is on the cover and he's written a short blurb for it but it's unclear if he had anything to do with compiling the pieces.

We've played this with our ensemble for a while now, but I've just recorded an overdubbed multi-track version by way of trying out my brand new USB microphone (a Zoom H2n). It sounds miles better than my old Philips dynamic mic, which tells me that I should have upgraded ages ago -- these things are remarkably cheap for what they can do and how they sound!

I've played the first and second mandolin parts on my Embergher Type A. I don't play guitar, so I've substituted tenor guitar -- the guitar is strumming for most of the piece, except for the trio section in which it plays arpeggios which sit fine on the tenor. I'm still finding my feet in overdubbing duets/trios, but this worked pretty well, except for a few bars at the end of the trio and the da capo, where the alignment goes a bit wonky. I should also make my tremolo smoother and/or faster, I think.

I've put the recording on Soundcloud, as downloadable MP3:

Sonatina No. 1

And the same recording on Youtube, with some pictures of de Pace:

Youtube

As always, I'm just a hack compared to many of the fine players here, but you may enjoy the piece (if not my playing of it)...

Martin

[Martin Jonas]

Here is the score for the piece. It's straightforward to play, and presumably written by de Pace not for his own concert repertoire as it's a good solid amateur piece rather than soloist material. May have been intended for his students.

Very enjoyable to play, in any case.

Martin

[Andy Boden]

Lovely little piece - thanks for posting it, Martin

....... and especially thanks for the score - I'll enjoy playing this one

I like the sound of that mandolin.

[JH Murray]

With your USB microphone what sort of recording software do you use, and did it require much adjusting to get the recorded sound you wanted? I am thinking of getting a USB mic but am new to it all.

[Martin Jonas]

With your USB microphone what sort of recording software do you use, and did it require much adjusting to get the recorded sound you wanted? I am thinking of getting a USB mic but am new to it all.

The Zoom H2n comes with a copy of a Wavelab LE7, which is a cut-down version of the full recording suite. I haven't installed that, because as far as I can see it only allows two tracks in the LE edition, which is fairly useless. Instead, I use Audacity which is free and very easy to use. No problem at all using the Zoom as a USB microphone with it: Audacity has a pull-down menu with all installed microphones and all one has to do is select the Zoom. A slight complication with the Zoom is that it also has a small (and useless) built-in speaker for monitoring purposes, and Windows recognises that as USB headphones and sets it as default speaker for playback when plugged in. That's no problem for Audacity -- there's another pulldown menu to select the playback device.

Using it with my Logitech webcam is more frustrating, and I don't think I'll be doing much of it. The webcam software recognises the Zoom just fine, but there is no recording level indicator in the software, so setting the gain it trial-and-error. Worse, the finished video is about half a second out of sync when using the USB mic compared to the line-in socket. Finally, when I watch the video after recording to check if it's OK, the webcam software insists on playing it back through the microphone's built-in speaker and doesn't want to be persuaded otherwise -- I had to unplug the pic for playback and plug it back in for the next recording. So, problems with webcam recordings, but very easy and good results with audio-only recordings using Audacity.

I should also say that the Zoom is really intended as a field recorder, so it's great for recording rehearsals or sessions to an SD card -- no computer or recorder required and it has 20 hours battery life with two AA batteries.

Martin

[Marc Woodward]

Hi Martin,
Nice to hear these pieces played, and played well, good stuff!

I'll have a look at my Yellow Book later but I seem to recall that Hugo says in the blurp that this was a collection of pieces of varying levels of difficulty and some of which he'd performed on the radio - I had the impression that some were indeed pieces from his repertoire and that he personally had compiled the selection.

Cheers,

Marc

[Martin Jonas]

Hi Marc,

Thanks for the kind words!

What Hugo says in the blurb is:

"This well-chosen collection of mainly late Victorian pieces will be of the greatest interest to the mandolinist who enjoys giving pleasure. Indeed, many of my earlier BBC solo programmes comprised selections from precisely this collection."

This strikes me as peculiar wording if he had been the editor or compiler of the book. Surely, he wouldn't describe it as "well-chosen" if it was his own selection. The cover says "with introduction by Hugo d'Alton" but doesn't credit him as editor. I had the impression that an in-house editor at Clifford Essex picked pieces from the BMG Magazine back catalogue and then asked Hugo to say some nice words about it.

Lots of good stuff in the book anyway -- amongst those I've tried out, "Bouquet of Roses", "Garden of Flowers", "Amor Innocenta", "L'Automne" and "Tears and Smiles" are all really nice original mandolin compositions and "La Cinquantaine" and Weber's Barcarolle are good adaptations of standard classical repertoire pieces.

Martin

[Marc Woodward]

Ah, thats it! You're right it would be funny wording if he'd chosen them, although I was right in recalling that these included pieces he'd performed on the radio.

Polcha Variata from this book was in Ali's repertoire (and Chris Acquavella along with Piccolo Gavotta and Moonlight on the Thames).
Pretty seminal collection really!

Marc

[John Zimm]

Martin,

What a nice piece, thanks for sharing.

-John.

[Martin Jonas]

I have just been revisiting this little trio composition by De Pace, which was my very first multitrack home recording back in 2012 -- we still play it every now and then with our practice group and it's always fun. Here is a new recording I made over the weekend. Not massively different from what I did in 2012, but recording and playing are both rather smoother.

1890s Umberto Ceccherini mandolin (x2)
Vintage Viaten tenor guitar



At the same time, I have also recorded the attached very short piece by Ferdinando Carulli, in a setting for mandolin quartet (three mandolins and guitar) published in the BMG Magazine in 1950. Also available for download from:

https://classic-banjo.ning.com/page/bmg-magazines

1890s Umberto Ceccherini mandolin
Mid-Missouri M-0W mandolin (x2)
Vintage Viaten tenor guitar



Martin

[raimondo]

Grazie martin per aver condiviso questo spartito di B Pace ,e complimenti per la tua attivita mandolinistica instancabile ,alla ricerca di tanta bella musica

[Martin Jonas]

I am currently re-discovering the virtues of the mandolin that I have inherited from my grandfather, via my mother. It was also my own first mandolin, but has been in a cupboard for more than a decade as I have been playing instruments with bigger names. I was prompted to dig it out again by my niece needing a family heirloom to research for a university presentation, and foung it to be much nicer than I remembered. I have been trying it on a wide range of genres over the past few weeks.

This one is another attempt (my third) at de Pace's lovely Sonatina No. 1. This time, I wanted to do justice to the composer's instruction "tempo di gavotte" at the top of the score, so this is faster and also more free in tempo than the other two versions earlier in this thread.


1920s/30s "Majestic" mandolin (x2)
Vintage Viaten tenor guitar


https://youtu.be/gvDQ4QERr8Y

Martin