La Bergère de Coulandon #160 (Bourrée à Deux Temps) and Belle Bergère #120 (Valse)

This is a classic scottish, #44 in the Bal Folk Tune Book. I wrote an appreciation of it some time ago, and have found it to be hard to get under my fingers. I really am fond of it, but it became a kind of beloved bete noir, seducing me and accusing me simultaneously. This felt good.

One of my very favorite waltzes, by Roger Tallroth of Väsen. I learned it from the version by Dervish, which is very winsome and almost sentimental — but goddammit it always gets me the third time through when drum kicks up! Very inspiring. This is specifically NOT a sentimental version. Trying something different. A straight-ish French waltz at French-waltz pace.

(Sheet music below!)

This a mazurka written in honor of my new wife, Sunshine, who I married on March 12 of this year. It’s musical inception happened when fiddler Lissa Schneckenburger asked, on Facebook, what are your favorite chord changes. I offered mine (Am F G Am) and then started thinking of a tune — this tune — which ultimately did not use those changes. I’m not entirely sure what key it is in. Probably A minor, but it’s got a lot of F major-centric business going on there, and that chord sequence of Bb, Dmin, F is just me climbing the triad with the same melodic chunk underneath. It’s an effect I love — building on the Breton repetition-to-trance method. Not that mazurkas are especially (or even marginally) Breton. Even with all that Hullaballoo, it sits perfectly on my Castagnari Mory G/C. You don’t need the half row, but I do use the Bb and Dm bass/chord (you could substitute F and D no third, if you wanted to). Here’s the sheet music.

Two mazurkas for you. Mazurka Sainte Colombe (#123) and Tiro l’Auto (varsovienne) (#130). I’m not sure what the varsovienne thing is — there are a number of tunes with that appellation, and they have a rhythmic similarity, but I don’t know if it’s a particular dance or if it’s just supposed to indicate its provenance coming as a waltz from Vienna (even though it’s a mazurka). So there.

Two polkas that are long long time pieces in my repertoire (they are on my CD, for example). Polka Piquée (one of many Polkas Piquée) and Polka d”Aveyron.

The band, Le Bon Truc, got together for the first time in four months and played on the porch. Steve (clarinet) was a little more socially distant that Barb and I because his is a wind instrument, but we sounded great and had fun and actually (*weepy*) shared space together. This 3 beat bourrée is one of our favorite tunes. This was literally the first tune of the afternoon for us. It’s tune #62 in the Bal Folk Tune Book.