Domeniconi, Carlo - A Rose in the Garden - Mastered
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| Il faut bien que je supporte deux ou trois chenilles si je veux connaître les papillons. |
The piece is played directly repeated, so it's up to the player to find a way to make it into a chapter.
Personally, I prefer to play it bright and energetic on the first refrain - with bit more standard pacing, then slow it down and add a touch of melancholy for the second and end with tenderness and the gentlest breeze.
I find the second phrase a little uncomfortable with 4 repetitions of the same note, so I like to play it either with bookends or an ABAB structure. Which I think might be appropriate for that spends so much time speaking of boas and baobabs.
When I was young and I read this book, I didn't care for it, feeling that it was too juvenile for an 8th grade student. Perhaps it was right in between being too juvenile and too insightful, because the deeper content was well and truly lost on me. Perhaps that had something to do with the teacher. I don't remember any discussion of the deeper aspects of the story. But that might have been my own fault.
One thing that slipped my notice or recollection was the fact that there is an aspect of the story where the Prince encounters a rose garden. He suddenly discovers that roses are actually fairly commonplace and has to be educated about the fact that it is not the number of similar things that make the individual special.
I think it would be nice if there was a larger piece to match this thought and expands on the theme of A Rose in the Garden, perhaps "The Garden of Roses", but although Domeniconi did write more pieces in tribute to this story, that's not one of them (check this).
One of the interesting things about this piece is that it sits in one of the most difficult parts of the fretboard. It is typically played mostly on the 4th and 6th strings. With well-tempered tuning, these two parts of the scale tend to pick up the slack between scales. So both of these fret positions tend to be very close to being 'out of tune' even when the rest of the guitar is in tune. And it doesn't take much variation in pressure on the string to push it out far enough to be noticeable. The LH needs to be very attentive so as to avoid atonality. If the strings are in bad condition, the D string often needs to be tuned a bit flat to make this one work.
Another side effect - possibly unintentional - is that the resonance is a little stifled with notes on the 4th and 6th. Notes on the 7th, 9th and 12th generally ring like bells (especially on the lattice top), but notes on the 4th and sixth have much less sustain and spread. This gives the melody a bit of a colder, more empty feeling, as if the atmosphere is thin and there aren't any walls.
The sustain on the lattice top actually works a bit against me on this one as a couple of the switches between fingerings sound strange because they get cut off before the note has had a chance to decay naturally.
Finally, I have to give thanks to Amy Welsman for playing this and putting it on Youtube to be discovered (since removed for privacy concerns) and even better than that, transcribing it into tab format for me! A gracious gift indeed! At her request, the tab is not available to the public.
