Six Duettinos, Summer 2006 no. 1

Six Duettinos, Summer 2006 no. 1 (mp3)(pdf)

From the text on my Six Duettinos, Summer 2006 page:

"I composed these simple duets for 2 mandolins in early June 2006 as I was completing the work of transcribing the Eighteen Duettinos for Two Guittars; Two French Horns or Two Clarinetts" that were published by William Bates around 1770 in London. As I was playing his charming little pieces I thought it might be fun to write a piece or two of my own in the same spirit. I ended up with six in quick succession.

Bates' duettinos are all very limited in scope, mine are only slightly more adventurous. My goal was to keep the music simple (not usually a big problem for me), to limit each piece to one page of paper in my notebook and to have the first mandolin part carry the whole melody with the second part supplying basic harmonies with lots of thirds. These are all characteristics of the pieces in the Bates set."

I also have a page that links to my transcription of the Bates collection. You can find it here.

Back in October of 2010, as part of the announcement of my Midwestern Mandolin Duos collection, I posted a recording of the second of these 6 short pieces. I've been meaning to get around to recording the others ever since. So here's no. 1 of the set. Although written as duos, the top line of all of these pieces work fine as short solos. Also, the pdf link takes you to the sheet music for the full set of six pieces.

Number 3 will be posted sometime soon.