In the United States, mandolins are most closely associated with bluegrass, thanks to the genre’s founder, Bill Monroe. However, the eight-stringed instrument evolved from lutes in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. Pair that with its tuning, which mimics the violin, and it makes perfect sense that Baroque and classical music sound great on it.
Case in point: Chris Thile.
The well-rounded mandolin maestro is best known for his work in the progressive acoustic trio Nickel Creek and the forward-thinking bluegrass unit Punch Brothers. However, he’s a master interpreter of Johann Sebastian Bach‘s music. He released “Bach: Sonatas & Partitas, Vol. 1” in 2013, and he’s gearing up to follow it up with volume two on November 7th.
The upcoming album takes more liberties with Bach’s scores. Thile also brings extra life to the music by recording it in “multiple, somewhat untraditional, locations of personal significance,” the liner notes explain.
“My mentor, Edgar Meyer, has shown me … you practice Bach … because it makes your life better,” Thile says. “Because it makes the world around you seem like a better, happier place. Because communing with something that beautiful, made by a human being, continuing to be made and enjoyed by so many human beings, makes you proud to be human … I love practicing Bach, and I wanted to try and share how that ongoing process feels and sounds to me.”
Here, we’re checking out the mandolinist’s version of Partita No. 3 in E major, BWV 1006: III. Gavotte en rondeau, which he recorded in New York City’s Tompkins Square Park:
Bach wrote the piece for solo violin. As with much Baroque music, the movements are based on different dances of the time.
“A gavotte is a stylized French dance, moderate in tempo, always in duple meter, with each phrase beginning halfway through a measure,” The Bach Choir of Bethlehem explains. “The phrases are almost always groups of four measures each, and are often paired in an antecedent-consequent manner. Like the air, it is a binary form, with two repeated sections. It is graceful, sometimes joyful, but not as romping and raucous as a gigue.”
The third movement of Partita No. 3 is lauded for its melodic inventiveness, rhythmic lightness, and implied polyphony, as the piece often suggests more than one voice. While the violin version implies this, Thile is better suited to exploit the idea on the mandolin. He highlights chordal textures by letting notes ring throughout specific passages where a bowed violin may not have as much sustain. This attention to detail and phrasing heightens the musicality.
And as Thile uses a pick instead of a bow to make his instrument speak, it gives an extra percussive boost, which is always a driving force in dance music, no matter the era.
Just watch the video of “Gavotte en rondeau” above, and you’ll see that Thile is feeling the music so much that he can barely keep still.
Follow along with the sheet music for Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E major, BWV 1006: III. Gavotte en rondeau:
