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"Finger Pedaling" and Solo Mandolin Performance

by Evan J. Marshall

Several years ago, I appeared on a radio show dedicated to Classical music for plucked string instruments. The guest who was on just before me was a harpsichordist; she referred to a certain technique she used as "finger-pedaling", and she described it as follows: "In the same way that a pianist can sustain a note so that it rings well beyond the attacks of subsequent notes in a run or arpeggio by means of a sustain pedal, so can a harpsichordist; the latter, however, must do so by keeping the key of the note to be sustained down without interruption. We refer to this pedal-like sustain achieved with prolonged finger pressure on a key as 'finger-pedaling'. "It occurred to me that a solo mandolinist playing in duo-style music do something quite similar: in order to achieve two distinct characters of sound between the tremolo melody and single-stroke accompaniment notes below it, an accompaniment note generally must be sustained beyond the start of the next few tremolo notes.

Examples 1 & 2 are the opening statements of two of the plucked string's "greatest hits": Vivaldi's Mandolin Concerto in C and Tarrega's Recuerdos de la Alhambra (originally in A Minor). Both examples tell the performer the succession of running notes to be played. Recuerdos, however, gives additional specific instructions to the performer: the downbeat notes are "double-stemmed", and the downward stems indicate durations much longer than a thirty-second note. These stems-down notes are to be "pedaled" (allowed to sound the full stems-down value), and in the case of the f, "finger-pedaled". The Vivaldi gives no such instructions; as a result, some performers interpret the notation literally and damp the lower g at the sounding of the higher g, while others take artistic liberties and pedal/finger-pedal the lower g.

To reiterate, one of the main uses of double-stem notation is to indicate pedaling/finger-pedaling, with the stem of shorter duration (usually upward) showing the relative timing of the beginning of every note in the measure, while the stem of longer duration (usually downward) shows how long a note should be sustained. The other uses of double-stemming relate to unisons, such as a unison between two sections of a choir, or a unison double-stop on a string instrument, e.g., fretted d and open d played simultaneously. The musical context of the double-stemming will usually make the correct interpretation readily apparent.

My most frequent application of finger-pedaling to music for mandolin is duo-style technique as shown in Example 2 above. Are there other applications? Yes! Let's look at an excerpt of Bach's Cello Suite #1, transposed to the range of the mandolin:

The double-stemming is not Bach's; it's mine. My reason for finger-pedaling this passage is this: Bach is writing in "two voices", the compositional effect of stepwise motion followed by an intervallic leap and then followed by a leap back to the previous register for more stepwise motion, with the pattern repeating several times. The purpose of this effect is to create self-accompaniment; self-accompaniment by the solo mandolinist is facilitated and enhanced by finger-pedaling.

Practice slowly at first, following tab, fingering, and pick direction exactly. Later, focus on sounding the first note of each measure its full stems-down value while increasing tempo.