Composer: Fritz Andersen (1829-1910)

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Fritz Andersen was a Danish composer from Copenhagen.  There's almost nothing about him online but it looks like he wrote small chamber works and songs.  

 

One tidbit I thought was interesting was that Andersen wrote the lyrics to the Danish folk song "In the Deep Stillness of the Forest" which were misattributed to Hans Christian Andersen for decades.  (I say "one tidbit" but it really was the "only tidbit.")

 

Date: 1890

 

Original Instrumentation: 2 violin, viola

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Movements:    

1. Allegro moderato

2. Serenade

3. Minuet

4. Allegro

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Why this one:

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​This was a new instrument combo and it didn't look too hard.  I try to keep a fairly unambitious piece that I can blow through quickly ready to go so if i end up with like 30 minutes left in a session after finishing something else i can still make use of the time.  This one fit the bill.​

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Description:  

 

Movement 1 - Allegro Moderato

Key:  D

Time: 4/4      BPM=110

 

This has a vague overall structure of AA'BCAA"B"D.  The short theme in section A, with the melody in the violin 1  (left) is based around a long short rhythmic pattern and the section repeats with slight variations in A' and A".  Both A' and A" sound like they modulate  in key, maybe D and Em respectively.  The dominant rhythmic idea in sections B and C is the triplet.  The final D section serves as a coda and is dominated by triplets.  There's a lot of passing accidentals throughout which makes some of the key modulations hard for me to lock into.  That is, if it is altering the key center, which to me it feels like  but it's sufficiently fuzzy that I don't want to speculate too definitively.

 

The melody is mostly in the violin 1 with the viola and violin 2 (right) usually harmonizing in the same rhythm with each other, though sometimes violin 2 harmonizes with violin 1 instead.

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Performance:​

​I did viola first here, then violin 1 and violin 2.  I didn't have  any issues.  This was pretty easy. 

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Movement 2 - Serenade

Key:  Em

Time: 3/4      BPM=85

 

This is a slow movement in 3 that has an almost medieval feel, especially in the long short long figure played in violin 1 at around 0:22 and the eighth note run at around 0:45.   The opening sequence has the slow viola melody playing on the downbeats in with the violins sketching out double stops in response.  Then the sequence vaguely repeats with a different starting note (B  instead of E) and the violin 1 taking the melody and the viola sketching out double stops with violin 2.

 

There's a tone shift at around 1:00 with the piece switching to C major.

 

The movement soon modulates out of C major and the medieval-ish eighth note ideas in the violin 1 return for the outro.

 

Performance:

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This was also pretty easy, but I did have to really focus to not rush ahead of the beat, which is easy to do in really slow pieces.

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Movement 3 - Minuet

Key:  G

Time: 3/4      BPM=112

 

This has the expected overall minuet ABA structure, with B being in a different key. C in this case, but like the rest  of this piece there  are a lot of passing accidentals that make it feel a little harmonically unstable,   Towards the end of the B section there's some pretty crunchy dissonances which, unlike in some other pieces I've done, didn't sound like mistakes but rather deliberate compositional choices, especially given how many accidentals were in this throughout.  This score was also officially engraved / printed, rather than being a sloppy handwritten one, so I felt pretty good about trusting the notes were as the composer intended.

 

All three instruments have melodic stuff to do throughout this movement, though the initial theme is first played in the violin 1.

 

Performance:

 

Nothing to note here, smooth sailing all around.

 

Errata

 

I split the viola recording across two sessions as I added this piece as a bonus onto the Böcklin recording session and only got the Allegro Moderato and Serenade done in the extra time.  I came back and finished the viola for movements 3 and 4 a couple months later after I had done the violins.

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Movement 4 - Allegro

Key:  D

Time: 4/4      BPM=170

 

For whatever reason, I find this movement's intro to be deeply weird, though I do like it quite a bit.  Most of this movement's first section is one instrument playing the melody while a second quickly  pedals between two notes and the third does some slower quarter note counters.   Which instrument is doing which part changes throughout.  The second section, starting at about 0:57 is less about long melodic lines and has more of the three instruments "conversing" with and echoing each other.  

 

The last section of this movement has the same general feel as the first part and then transitions to all the instruments harmonizing in rhythmic unison for the very end.

 

Performance:

 

I didn't really know how fast to play this, so I just input it into my notation software and altered the playback tempo until it sounded sufficiently allegro.  This was the most challenging of the movements, but that's a pretty low bar and I didn't have any real issues.

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Album Art:

 

I took this photo Nyhavn Street in Copenhagen in 2009.