Composer: Herbert Forest Odell (1872-1926)

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Odell was a musician from Boston who composed and arranged for the banjo, mandolin, guitar and taught those instruments along with voice, piano, and sight reading.  He was trained in music from a young age and even studied the mandolin in Paris with virtuoso Jean Pietrapertosa.  (I had not heard that name before; sounds like another LMP candidate.)
 

Odell was the  editor and manager of the The Crescendo magazine, a Boston publication self-described as being "devoted to the interests of the Mandolin, Guitar, and Banjo" and the  'official organ of the American Guild of Banjoists, Mandolinists and Guitarists."  Odell also served as Secretary-Treasurer of the Guild. 

 

Even the most casual skim of The Crescendo shows that his music and articles are all over it.  

 

Per his 1908 profile in The Crescendo Volume 1, No.3, p7:
 

At 14 he began the directing of orchestras and composing and arranging music. He has been teaching the mandolin, guitar and banjo. piano. voice and sight reading for 18 years anJ has had hundreds of pupils. He has had many advantages of Consultation here and abroad with the leading players and teachers.

 

He has been Director of the Euterpe Club. (18 years) the Langham Orchestra. Massachusetts Choral Society. Union Choral Club, Odell's Military Band and Orchestra. the Boston Operatic Society and other successful organizations.  He has produced  many operas, among them three of his  own compositions, "The Omos of Omona," :The Lark of the Larks" and "Atlantis."

 

Four years ago he produced and directed 15 large musical productions In one season. He has been manager and co-director of the four large Festival mandolin concerts given in Boston, at one of which he directed several numbers rendered an all orchestra of 250 mandolins, banjos and guitars. 60 voices and piano and organ.

 

He was recently elected to the board of government of the Handel and Hayden Society (400 voices) and Is the Superintendent of the sopranos of that organization which is the oldest choral society but one In the country.

 

(Also, The Crescendo Volume 1, No.3 references a banjo method book by William Stahl, a composer i previously recorded that I couldn't really find any biographical info on.)

 

Odell died in Brookline (a few miles outside Boston proper) in 1926.

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Date: Published in The Cresendo in 1909 (The Toastmaster) and 1908 (Idylle, Danse di Cupid)

 

Original Instrumentation: Mandolin (or violin), guitar

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Movements:    

1. The Toastmaster, Op.33

2. Idylle, Op.32

3. Danse di Cupid, Op.45

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Why this one:

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After I decided to play the Stewart banjo waltzes, I kind of went down the rabbit hole of late 19th century American music and decided to do a series of recordings focused on the period.   I stumbled on Odell's work when I was searching IMSLP for music of the time.

 

Given that Odell was an accomplished and tireless advocate for the instruments I play and edited a music magazine that seems to have had a decent, if niche, circulation and I thought it would be nice to highlight his work.

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Description:  

 

The Toastmaster, Op.33

Key:  G

Time: 2/2      BPM=110

 

This is listed as a march.  It's structured AABBCDC'and the guitar mostly plays a stride piano-esque bass note - chord - bass note - chord four beat pattern, which has an old timey bouncy feel.  In the A section the guitar mostly alternates between the chords G and D7, with an A7 near the end to inject some harmonic tension.  The violin melody has a really strong rhythmic sequence (short short long; long short short long) that reoccurs several times, repeating up a step, then starting over, and then holding on an A.

 

The section B guitar accompaniment goes between D7 and G with a non-diatonic E7 which, again, adds some tension.  The violin is a more flowing melodic line than in the A section, though the rhythmic motif does make a brief appearance at the end.

 

The C section modulates to C major, the guitar still mostly playing a stride pattern in the new key.  The violin has another flowing melodic line.  The end of the C section has a lot of accidentals and feels like a key modulation but I can't place it.  After this vaguely harmonically unstable transition, the C' section violin melody is the C melodic sequence but up a 7th. 

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Performance:​

 

​As with all of these, I did the guitar part first, then the mandolin.   I didn't have any trouble with either part and the mandolin part in particular was really fun to play.

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Errata:

 

The music for all three of these songs lists "1st mandolin or violin" implying there's versions for a larger ensemble.  This would make sense, given Odell's work with mandolin orchestras, but I didn't find the other parts.  I also didn't look very hard, as even with only two instruments none pf the songs sounded like they were missing anything.​

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Idylle, Op.32

Key:  D

Time: 6/6      BPM=Eighth note 180

 

This song has a lilting, beautiful, and, well, "idyllic" melody in the violin.  It's overall structure is ABA'.  In the 32 bar A section, the guitar, after a brief 3 bar intro, plays mostly broken chords in ascending then descending arpeggios

 

The 16 bar B section feels like it's mostly in Bb and the guitar switches from arpeggiated chords to straight chords.  There's a lot of accidentals in the melody line, but rhythmically its rather similar to part A.

 

The A' melody is mostly the A melody up an octave (over the same broken guitar chords as earlier) with a slight deviation in the finale that is really high up the neck.

 

The subtitle of this one says "Romancia" and yeah, it sounds like an idyllic romantic song.

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Performance:

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The guitar part of this gave me a little more trouble than I was expecting.  Some of the fingering was tricky and getting a really clean (i.e. no fret buzzing or inadvertent string mutes) was a challenge.  The piece is so slow and pretty that any sloppiness really stands out and the recording environment is WAY less forgiving than a live environment.    

 

The mandolin part was not very difficult, though the end is really high up on the neck, where the frets are incredibly close together and it's tough to get the good ringing tone a piece like this requires.  I was prepared and managed it passably, I think

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Danse di Cupid, Op.45

Key:  G

Time: 4/4      BPM=105

 

The subtitle of this is "An Oddment," a term I really like and it does have kind of a quirky vibe.  While the guitar is sort of doing the stride pattern, the unhurried tempo combined with the triplet based violin melody makes this one not have the strong stride / ragtime feel of The Toastmaster.

 

The song has an overall structure of AABBCDDAE, with each section consisting of 16 bars.  The B and D sections modulate to D major and C major, respectively.  

 

The rhythmic building block of the violin part is the triplet, which is the mainstay of the melody everywhere except section D, which has an almost tip-toeing opening figure followed by fairly straight rhythms.

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Performance:​

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No real issues here.  This was the easiest of the three Odell songs.  The mandolin part here, too, was fun to play.​

 

Album Art:

 

This is a photo of the George Washington statue in Boston Common that I took in 2011.  The Boston Bruins were in the Stanley Cup finals at the time.  (They won a few days later.)