Composer: William Stahl (1869-1940)

 

[Bio]

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Date:  ?

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Original Instrumentation: Mandolin (or Violin), Guitar

 

Why this one:

 

When I was looking to add some guitar to the Lazarus Music Project I stumbled on this short piece. Since I had never recorded with a nylon string classical guitar before, I wanted to find something that looked like it wouldn't break my spirit. I thought it would be a good easy first piece with a classical guitar. but as it turns out it was a touch more difficult than I thought it would be and it wasn't the first guitar piece I recorded.
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Description:  

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Key: D
Time: 2/4  BPM=65

There's actually three versions of this piece with different instrumentation: one for solo guitar, one for guitar and violin (or flute), and one for 2 guitars. The version I chose has the violin playing the melody over continuous sixteenth note chord arpeggios in the guitar.

It's titled "Allemande" which is a German dance at a moderate tempo.

The piece is structured as AABBCCAB, with each section being 8 measures. The C section is in B minor, the relative minor of the home key of D. The harmony is really basic, with the A and B Sections just bouncing between the I IV and V chords that are (still) a staple of Western harmony

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Performance:

 

I wasn't sure what tempo to play this at. Allemandes are at moderate tempos so I just picked the fastest moderate tempo I thought I could consistently do the guitar sixteenth notes at.

The guitar was tricky to record, but all told not all that difficult. I had to use four fingers on my right hand (thumb, index, middle, ring), a standard classical guitar technique. I had to practice a lot though, as I didn't have any recording experience with this kind of arpeggiation. And since the arpeggios were going basically the entire time I needed to build up the coordination and stamina to ensure I could get a smooth and consistent sound with all four fingers. It's easy to buzz a string on a guitar and I also had to be aware of the open drone strings I was hitting with my thumb, to make sure they didn't ring out past beat boundaries, particularly when I changed chords.

All told it went pretty well, but it was stressful.

The violin was pretty easy, though because it wasn't all that hard and I had a lot of pieces I was working on, I kind of gave this one a short shrift when practicing. I wasn't as rehearsed as I normally am. This was at the very end of a long day, too, so I think I might have been a little tired. I made a lot of mistakes for the difficulty of the part, mostly because my focus was flagging.

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Album Art:

 

I took this picture of my friend Nicky when I visited her in Milwaukee.  Sadly, the Fonz statue did not exist when Stahl lived in Milwaukee.