# Repertoire suggestions for 2 voices or voice and mandolin?



## whereswalden (May 21, 2012)

Hi all! This is my first post, so if I've broken any rules, I apologize.

I am a college-level violin student. I would like to be able to make music with my girlfriend, an amateur vocalist, but I've never heard of any repertoire for violin and voice. Instead, I also play the mandolin and can sing decently, but I've had trouble thus far finding simple, approachable repertoire for two voices or for voice and mandolin. I particularly like early and Baroque music, so I would love to find some duet madrigals or some simple voice pieces with figured bass (I can realize well enough). Do you have any suggestions?


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## humanbean (Mar 5, 2011)

This may work for you. I believe it is scored for lute, viol, and voice. The viol part isn't very essential, so if you wanted to you could possibly just play the lute part with the mandolin (I don't know too much about the differences between mandolin and lute, but you may be able to pull it off.) Although it's not baroque, it is late renaissance and it's a pretty good tune.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

Is this the sort of thing?






Holst's four songs for voice and violin, Op. 35 (1917)
Vaughan Williams' Along the field
Eight Housman songs for voice and violin (1927, revised 1954)
and Rebecca Clarke's Three old English songs (1924) 
are all discussed briefly here: http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4935/m1/1/

Then there are 
Matyas Seiber: 4 Hungarian folk songs
Philip Selby: 3 Scottish songs
Villa-Lobos: 3 cançoes


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

The main work of some fame for violin and voice is probably *Kurtag*´s "Kafka Fragments", written in a modern miniature style and probably also exceedingly difficult to perform.

I don´t know the limitations of the mandolin versus the lute, but the songs of *John Dowland *  are generally a treasure-grove. Lesser known are those of *Iacopo Peri* 




*Monteverdi*´s lovely "Lamento della Ninfa" could maybe-maybe be arranged as a duet (?):


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## whereswalden (May 21, 2012)

humanbean said:


> This may work for you. I believe it is scored for lute, viol, and voice. The viol part isn't very essential, so if you wanted to you could possibly just play the lute part with the mandolin (I don't know too much about the differences between mandolin and lute, but you may be able to pull it off.) Although it's not baroque, it is late renaissance and it's a pretty good tune.


Thanks! I love Renaissance music as well.

Thanks to everybody for the great suggestions. For future reference, I have no problem doing simple arrangements. Also, if it makes any difference, my girlfriend's vocal range can be anywhere from Mezzo to Solo Soprano.

If you have any more recommendations, especially pieces that could be sightread easily, I'd love to see them!


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)




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