28. Bublitchki

Bublitchki is a Russian folk song and is literally the word for pretzels. It's a very upbeat number, and I remember liking it immediately the first time I heard it played. J. T. points out that lots of great dance tunes are written in the minor mode. I found this bit of knowledge surprising, but cool. It's nice to know that minor keys aren't just for mourning. This opening is probably the most morose part of the song, and it presents its challenge in the need to switch fingers while repeating that first A. It's kinda cool though: the right hand shifts to the right on each stroke like the head of a typewriter (if we still remember how those things work) and gets in place just in time to strike out that dyad that begins the second bar. The seventh in the left hand is followed by the second in the right to create a slight dissonance that leads into the main theme. It's an interesting sort of bendy sound.

The main theme (if Bublitchki can be considered to have one) is this bit to the right, and I guess it's the rhythmic pattern it exemplifies that makes it "main," since that pattern's pretty much the backbone of each section. (So, yeah, no theme per se...) The two-note slurs in the left hand sort of suture the melodic gap in the right hand just after that accented dyad that breaks the line of staccato quavers. It is also fun to play. The whole thing has a sort of rag-ish flavour, and the rhythm is itself very similar to that of The Entertainer. It's noticeably not rag though, despite this similarity. The travelling sixths in the right hand required some practice to keep my fingers the right width and to travel consistently only one semi(tone) down in each (half) beat. (That'll get me ready for Bertini's Octave Study in the 4th Grade Book!) This sequence repeats before the text changes, so I also needed work on getting my fingers back in place after the trip.

To the left is a little flourish that follows the repeated sequence mentioned above. It's preceded by a variation on that repeated phrase (first bar), and then bam! this section in the second bar comes in. Note that the semiquavers in the left hand squeeze into the second half of that quaver I pointed out in the previous paragraph, so it seems that all the cool stuff happens right there in that portion of each bar. Okay, maybe other interesting things happen elsewhere...

One such is this complication of the left-hand accompaniment which has it handling far more than the two notes it started out with. Its part is spread evenly throughout the bar this time, but that final C that ends the flourish in the previous section is repeated here too, see? Playing that right hand staccato with the legato in the left requires some care. 

The portion below I recall well. It's quite a feat to recall any one section particularly well because each bar is so similar that I did have some trouble differentiating them while learning. It wasn't quite as bad as Will o' the Wisp, but there were moments of confusion. Still, this bar is conspicuous not only because of the gradual increase in pitch, but especially because of the fingering. The 1-4-3-1 terminates in a C# played with the second finger at the beginning of the next bar. This fingering reminds me of something I played back in Londonderry Air: I think that was a 3-1-2 fingering with the right hand. Wow... it seems so long ago. Was only a tiny bit over four months, though. So much has happened since, and I even have a few blogs in the pipeline. I'm sitting on Melody (Massenet), Prelude in E Minor (Chopin) and I just finished learning all the parts of Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (J.T.'s adaptation), so I haven't exactly been idle these past few months...

This final bit is the end-variation on the last section, and it completes the piece. D minor is the final chord, but held in its first inversion in the right hand. Bubilitchki doesn't actually change keys at all throughout, so it's been in D minor all this time. I seem to recall a lot more Fs and As than Ds though. But in two prior culminating moments that ended each bigger section, the final sequence of notes in the left hand were D-B Flat-A-F-D. (I really should have included a picture of that, too.) So I guess a D minor key signature holds up. This song was fun to play, and I probably moved on from it too soon. Well, I suppose I haven't really, since I do still practice it, even though I'm currently learning something else.

Alan Chan's rendition