Dedicated to my son, Parker!
This is a tune by my hero, Frédéric Paris. It was tune of the month at Melodeon.net. I’ve written a lot about Frédéric, even early on in the life of this blog, including an interview. I’ve also played a lot of his music, including here, here, and here.
Three-beat bourrées from the Bal Folk Tune Book (#34 and 44) played on my Castagnari Mori with all but one reed stopped, and the bass and third reeds stopped on the left hand. Photos of Auvergne harvested from the web. Part of the Bal Folk Tune Book Project. The tunes are “J’avais une bonne amie” and “Derrière Chez Nous.”
Proven: wearing a mask will NOT impede your ability to play a French waltz! Also, if you want to play accordion, be pandemic safe, AND fight crime, I think I’m onto something. This is #112 in the Bal Folk Tune Book. One of those tunes you pick at while going through the book figuring out what to play next. Then you get to the end and it washes over you, “That was delightful!”
Dedicated to Melissa Hinnen!
(Also, I flub the ending for the sake of authenticity. Yeah. That’s it. Authenticity!)
Something of a theme for this entry in the Bal Folk Tune Book Project. I noticed that a number of mazurkas I play have a characteristic of beginning the B section with the IV chord. It creates a lovely sense of levitation and, if the song were telling a story, I think that’s when you would know the two of them were really in love!
It happens often enough in mazurkas that I am beginning to think this is a defining trait of a subset, but it doesn’t only happen in mazurkas. As I was recording the mazurkas, I remembered the tune, “Mominette” (by Maxou, in the tune book as untitled #26), which also goes to the IV chord at the B section and is quite lovely (especially as the A section has a ominous tone. Will things work out??? Yes, yes they will. You know because of the IV chord.)
Also, with the mazurkas, the first is a sans nom tune that I began to call “Hannibal’s Mazurka” some years ago (I was teaching the ancient Romans at the time). If anyone knows a different name, let me know. I can be taught!
Two bourrées for the Bal Folk Tune Book Project (#78 and 53). You can see the dust motes going by in the morning sun.
Actually, this is “Villapourçon,” which I have used as the soundtrack for an excursion (huaka’i) on the Parker Pond Headlands. It’s an interesting tune, with the A section in D, but being played on the G/C accordion (the Mory), and then it changes to G for the B section and seems to have this amazing feeling of levitation.
I have been learning video editing during the quarantine, and I used this 1:36 to experiment with a bunch of stuff. It ended up being very time consuming. If I continue down this rabbit hole, I will never get through the Bal Folk Tune Book Project.
This one was actually in the process of entering the Le Bon Truc repertoire thanks to Steve Gruverman. We tried it in a bunch of places on a bunch of accordions, and think we ended up in G minor. Here, on the G/C Mory, it fits on the pull minor (Amin), but I’m playing it here on the push minor (Emin), as notated in the Bal Folk Tune Book. My harmonies are simple Emin to Amin and back again (repeat). For the video, I tried something different. Doing a slide show of Auvergnat postcards. I did this at a performance at the Hubbard Library in Hallowell a good number of years ago — projecting the slideshow behind me while I played. It was nice, I think, for the audience to have something to look at besides me. Part of the Bal Folk Tune Book Project.
And for a bonus, here’s a troupe from Berry doing the same piece, probably with more authenticity, and certainly with nicer hats.
A friend pointed out that I hadn’t done any mazurkas, yet! Here are two. One is untitled, the other is called Mazurka Auvergne — but aren’t they all from Auvergne? Hm. Check out the Bal Folk Tune Book Project!
I wrote this “mazurka vite!” 27 years ago on the occasion of my nephew’s birth. I recently revisited it. Been working on video skills and decided to add whistle and guitar. It was very fun! Sheet music below.
