Composer: Franz Friedrich Böcklin (1745-1813)

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Böcklin was born in Strasbourg to a very old German noble family.  There's almost nothing on him online in English, and not a whole lot in German, but German Wikipedia describes him as a naturalist and an author as well as a musician, though its list of his work doesn't include any music.  He seems to have been a bit of a Renaissance man, but he studied music performance and composition and wrote symphonies and church music, so I'd guess he was more than a music hobbyist.  Sadly, most of his music seems lost; IMSLP only has four of his works, all small chamber pieces.​​

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Also his full name was Franz Friedrich Siegmund August Böcklin von Böcklinsau, which is a hell of a name and sounds like something I'd make up if I wanted to come up with the most German sounding name possible.

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Date: ?

 

Original Instrumentation: Flute (or Violin), Viola, Guitar

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Movements:    

1. Adagio

2. Allegretto

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Why this one:

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​This was one of the first guitar pieces I found and I wanted to do it because I thought it would be a good one to ease myself  into adding guitar into the Lazarus Music Project, because it looked pretty easy.  It was, in fact, easy but because of how my practice and recording schedule worked out I ended up doing the longer and much more difficult Matteo Bevilacqua guitar trio first.​

 

Description:  

 

Movement 1 - Allegro poco

Key:  C

Time: 4/4      BPM=65

 

This movement is roughly in three parts with an opening being a pretty simple melody in the violin over mostly C and G chord triplet arpeggios in the viola or guitar.  Most of this triplet accompaniment is in the guitar, but the viola is pretty much always playing it when the guitar isn't.  There's some interesting syncopation in the violin towards the end of the section.

 

The second part shifts into a more minor cast, over E major and A minor chords.  (A minor is the relative minor to C major, and the E major chord has a G# in it, which to  my ear puts this section in A harmonic minor.

 

The movement returns to the opening C major melody, though after the first five bars the violin takes up a different melody as a sort of finale.

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Performance:​

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​This was pretty easy.  I did the guitar first and in a second session did the mandola and mandolin.  This movement, especially during the syncopated parts I mentioned earlier, is slightly more rhythmically complicated (taking all three parts into account) that it feels like it's going to be, so I had to concentrate so as not get thrown off.  This is always a hazard when I record multiple parts in one sessions; its hard not to get distracted by the interplay of all the parts that I'm listening to for this first time while trying to record.

 

Errata:

There's a lot of dotted eighth sixteenth note figures in one instrument against straight triplets in the other, which aren't quite the same rhythm.  I interpreted this dotted rhythm to mean it was still a triplet feel and I just made the the sixteenth note land on the 3rd note of the triplet in the other instrument. 

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So instead of this;​