Chaconne from Partita II (violin) BWV 1003

The last movement from Partita No. 2 (BWV 1004) for solo violin is one of the most transcribed works in music history because of its musical versatility. This arrangement for guitar adds an important interpretation of this major work to musical literature. The edition includes a full facsimile of the autograph.

Chaconne. Par LERDAHL FRED. Chaconne (2016), for string quartet, was commissioned by the Daedalus Quartet to celebrate its 15th anniversary. The commission was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, and Aaron Copland Fund for Music. My music has a substantial history with Daedalus. I composed the Third String Quartet (2008) for them, and subsequently they performed my three string quartets on several occasions and recorded them brilliantly on Bridge Records (Bridge 9352: Music of Fred Lerdahl, vol. 3). Chaconne is in one movement lasting 19 minutes. It is effectively my fourth string quartet. Quartets 1-3 form a unified cycle lasting 70 minutes. When I finished the cycle, I thought I would never write again for the medium; yet I could not resist the opportunity of working again with Daedalus. The issue was how to compose another string quartet unrelated to the earlier cycle. The solution came from my solo cello piece There and Back Again (2010), which was based on a four-bar variation pattern from a 17th-century chaconne. Unlike the asymmetrical phrases and expanding variations of much of my music, the chaconne form requires symmetrical phrases and strictly periodic variations. I wished to work again with these symmetries but on a larger scale. Chaconne also differs in character and expression from the three-quartet cycle. The cycle is inward and intense, a kind of psychological excavation. Chaconne is, for the most part, transparent and playful. Many of its textures emerge from little canons, not completely unlike the rounds that children sing. Any composer who writes in chaconne form (one thinks above all of the last movement of Bach’s D minor violin partita and the finale of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony) is confronted with the challenge of how to create a larger form out of a constantly repeating pattern. My Chaconne grows from paired antecedent-consequent phrases, each variation lasting eight bars. The 50 variations group into three large rotations, forming three arcs of tension and relaxation, with subtle parallel connections across the rotations. Notwithstanding my attraction to chaconne form, I purposefully disguised its symmetries and periodicities in order to build an overall dramatic shape. Fred Lerdahl/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

The composer says: Several musical threads led to my writing this piece of music to celebrate my friend Matanya Ophee?s (AKA MO) 80th birthday - a life lived with the guitar. Jelly Roll Morton once asserted: ?In fact, if you can't manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning; I call it, for jazz.? Over the last couple of years I moved back to Jelly Roll Morton?s city: New Orleans, home of my adolescence and reacquainted myself with the tinges of Spanish in its rich musical heritage. One of these pieces was the Mardi Gras Mambo, an iconic song frequently played during Mardi Gras and, in David Newman?s reworking of the lyrics, at the New Orleans Saints football games as the Super Bowl Mambo. Uncited sources on both Wikipedia and Essortment say the word Mambo means ?conversation with the gods? in Kikongo, the language spoken by Central African slaves taken to Cuba where it became the name for a musical form and a dance style that developed originally in Cuba in the able hands of Cachao?s (Bassist Orestes Lopez) tune: Danzon Mambo. This rhythmic style became famous in the 1950?s following its use in dance bands in Mexico and through New Orleans to the United States. The infectiousness of the New Orleans re-interpretation of the Mambo?s ostinato bass line and the reaction of people who are readily moved to dance when they hear it spoke to me of dance and celebration. This led me to choose some of this piece?s characteristics and title for this piece: Mambo for MO. As we have progressed on the instrument, some of us may have encountered the four-chord descending minor chord progression known as the Andalusian cadence: i - VII - VI - V in many different genres and guises. After all, it appears in Ray Charles? Hit the Road, Jack, the verse on Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys, Walk, Don?t Run by The Ventures, Runaway by Del Shannon and in that great work arranged and embraced by the Guitar: J.S. Bach?s Chaconne from the Partita in D minor for solo violin, BWV 1004. This bass line derived from a Latin American musical style as reinterpreted in New Orleans, a chord progression that evokes the Flamenco Music of Spain, and my impressions of the sinuous lines of people dancing the Second Line in the streets of New Orleans at Mardi Gras led me to this synthesis as a tribute to a man who has contributed so much in his lifelong efforts for the guitar, its history and lore on the occasion of his birthday! Happy Birthday, Matanya! Carlos Barrientos was born on June 25, 1954 in Tela, Honduras. He began his formal music studies at the National Music Conservatory in Guatemala City, Guatemala C.A. His training with Maestro Elias Barreiro, Director of Guitar Studies at Tulane University, was supplemented with Master Classes with Manuel Barrueco, Leo Brouwer, Juan Mercadal, Michael Newman, Tommy Tedesco and Carlos Barbosa-Lima. He studied composition under the tutelage of Dr. Jerry Sieg, University of New Orleans, and Dr. Roy Johnson, Florida State University. He consulted with Michael D. Martin, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Music, Albany State University, Albany, GA in the creation of a recordings library that reflects Western Art Music and American Jazz for the students at Albany State University. The New York Premiere of the First Movement of his Second Guitar Sonata was dedicated to and performed by Classical Guitarist Maestro Carlos Barbosa-Lima in 2003 at Carnegie Hall. At the request of U.S. Senator Bob Graham one of his compositions, Si Tu Te Vas (If You Go Away), was included on a recording to promote The Everglades Trail. In 2004, at the American Church in Paris, France the World Premiere of his Romance for Flute and Guitar was performed by the award-winning Serenade Duo, flutist Michelle LaPorte and guitarist Gerry Saulter. He has performed with such legendary musicians as Herbie Mann, Donald Byrd and Debbie Reynolds, led an on stage Renaissance Trio in a University of New Orleans production of Shakespeare?s Twelfth Night, and played incidental music for their production of Bertold Brecht?s The Good Woman of Sichuan. He has performed Carulli?s Guitar Concerto in A, Leonard Bernstein?s West Side Story and Marvin Hamlish?s A Chorus Line with the Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra and Okaloosa-Walton Community College, Niceville, FL, and with the Southern Art Music Ensemble, a Jazz/Latin Fusion Sextet, including an Honors Convocation in Atlanta for Mr. Ted Turner. He has been a guest performer with the Albany State University Jazz Ensemble at The Fletcher Henderson Jr., Macon and Atlanta Jazz Festivals, and played the banjo in the Albany State University /Albany Symphony?s co-production of George Gershwin?s Opera Porgy and Bess.