Description
The Violin and the Mandolin, accomplices and rivals: many violinists and composers who wrote for the mandolin - such as Vivaldi, Van Hall, Beethoven, Calace, Giuliani, Hoffman and many others - transposed their knowledge from one instrument to the other: the bow’s beats turned into strokes of the plectrum, while arpeggios, double string chords and virtuosities began to be used very frequently. A sort of expressive complicity or even a strong rivalry between the violin and the mandolin can be due to many factors: the simple possibility of passing from one instrument to another, the use of a similar virtuoso technique and the presence of an analogous instrumental idiom. Giovanni Francesco Giuliani was a violinist, a harpist, master of harpsichord and singing; what is clearly evident is that the composer has had a particular skill and a rich inspiration in making the instruments talk together, thus obtaining the most of their timbre’s variety and their technical and expressive possibilities. Very little is known about Giovanni Hoffmann, but it’s sure that at the end of XVIII century he was one of the top virtuosi upon the mandolin. The Ensemble Baschenis took the manuscripts of the pieces directly from Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien and edited them from the microfilm.
