Four compositions inspired by the music of French Brittany. You can listen to the arranged versions of these pieces on the albums and at the concerts of his music group Bran. The recordings available here were recorded by Tomáš for instructional purposes.
Plinn
Plinn is a traditional 4/4 dance, during which the dancers form a line and stomp in a rhythm of crotchet-crotchet-quaver-quaver-crotchet. I would be more satisfied if there were two quavers instead of the first crotchet, but that would be a completely different dance. Bran plays this composition as a combination of two plinns, one from me and another from our guitarist Vojta Jindra.
Plinn – instructional recording
Plinn – instructional recording
5/4 waltz
The fact that there exists a type of waltz in Brittany in 5/4 time wasn’t known to me until I’d composed this piece. The original intention was just not to play everything always in 2/4 or 3/4 time. On request of our guitarist, 3/4 waltz is to be heard for a while as well.
5/4 waltz – instrucional recording
5/4 waltz – instrucional recording
Gavotte
Old Breton dance with a traditional melody. The arrangement of this composition which you can hear on Bran’s album The Coast of Bohemia was made up on July 30th in 2003, 2004 or 2006 in Brittany. The temperature was about 40 degrees, we were sitting on a terrace about 100 metres form the Atlantic and playing music.
Gavotte – instructional recording
Gavotte – instructional recording
Vltava (Moldau)
My very first composition. I wrote it on one spring afternoon at the Department of Music in Plzeň, after a lunch at „U Nováků“. Good meal, a few beers, no mood to practice… The composition is called Vltava (Moldau) just because we couldn’t come up with anything else. And it is such a magnificent name, you know.
Vltava – instructional recording
Vltava – instructional recording
Comments, scores and recordings by Tomáš Görtler
Published on 18/7/2013