A little light music (polka)

[Jos Wylin]

Dear friends,

After a number of 'serious' baroque pieces, here's is a little light music.

It's one of the many short dances that I've found in attics and cellars of local bands with an ancient history. Most of our music societies have their origin in the first half of the 19th century. Their original scores have mostly disappeared, but now and then some merry piece emerges from oblivion and see daylight again. That was the case with this little polka. Unfortunately, I only had the main instrument score (thematic lines), so I had to do some orchestral reconstruction. I arranged it in the tradition of folk dances like the popular ensembles used to improvise in our country at the end of the 19th century.

Scoring (all VSL):

2 soprano recorders and 1 clarinet (Bb)

6 violins (3 first, 3 second)
1 double bass (fundamentals and rhythm)

Enjoy the 'Recorder Polka'.

Max

[William]

That's great, I love that piece.  What exactly are the places you find these in and how do you happen to be there to find them?  Have you found a lot of them?  Also, are they anonymous? Sorry to ask so many questions but I am curious about where this music is coming from. 

[Jos Wylin]

Hi William,

Thanks for listening.

These little pieces are everywhere, in all kinds of archives of old and ancient music societies. Some well-kept, some incomplete, some only one part of an arrangement. In Flanders we have a great number of old marching  and concert bands. Most of them have their origins in the middle of the 19th century. These dancing tunes were meant for amusement and dancing evenings. A smaller part of the orchestra usually played them. They had the skill of improvising voices to the tunes. That's why some are incomplete or just as a lead score..

Some of these cute melodies had to be written down from older spokesmen. I met one guy (who played and built dulcimers) in 1986. He was 94 years old when I recorded some of the tunes he knew. He learnt them from his grandfather's uncle (let's assume around 1850) who was a musician. 

Some of these dancing tunes are anonymous, but many of them ware actually composed by a 'composer', sometimes with an arrangement for small band. Unfortunately, most of these composers were pretty unknown or they changed their name (e.g. Streabbog, which turned out after a long search to be a composer Gobbaerts who wrote some pieces for concert bands and some dances. He simply turned his name...)

So a little luck is involved, the rest is searching in places where music has been played for a long time...

Kindly,

Max

[Stephane Collin]

So interesting.  Good that some people care to revive that historical music.