Guitars International recently released a beautiful video of Hao Yang playing the Canzonetta from Mendelssohn’s First String Quartet, op.12.
The transcription Hao plays is one that I made for her: in fact, some passages in the final version reflect her preferences among various options I proposed. As we went through the string quartet original, I was quite surprised at how many passages present difficult choices that affect how the music hangs together: you could say that each decision represents a different way of being faithful to Mendelssohn’s score. The publication of Hao’s video seemed like a good opportunity to share the transcription and reflect a bit on the choices made along the way.
To start with, then, here is the transcription for download in PDF. The original quartet score is available from IMSLP. This mischievous piece was an immediate hit after Mendelssohn published it in 1830. In the nineteenth century, it was already sometimes performed on its own in versions for different instruments: many of these historical transcriptions are available on IMSLP (look under the tab ‘Arrangements and Transcriptions’).
As for the guitar, Tárrega was the first to make a transcription (the score, published by Alier in Madrid around 1925) is also on IMSLP, both in its first edition and in a manuscript copy by Llobet); Segovia recorded it, adding personal touches as he always did; Julian Bream goes back to the original – as he always did – to make a more complex and virtuosic version of Tárrega. (To listen to these various versions, here is a playlist on YouTube.)
‘My transcription’ might be a bit of an overstatement. A transcription is not really new unless it demonstrates a new concept, and I’m not sure if it would have occurred to me that this piece could work on the guitar without Tárrega’s version to start from. But as I went through the score, I did in fact see some opportunities to try something new, particularly with regard to the role of the bass. Let’s dive in.
Continue reading “Different Kinds of Fidelity: The Canzonetta from Mendelssohn’s First String Quartet”
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