Jingle Bells/La Campanella mash-up
by Scott
We were excited to perform this week a premiere of my new Christmas mash-up of Jingle Bells with Franz Liszt’s virtuoso etude, La Campanella! Since the word “campanella” means bells in English, I thought it would be a perfect piece to combine with Jingle Bells. We performed the piece at the beautiful Silk Purse Arts Centre in West Vancouver, BC, in two concerts on the same day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Our video combines both of these performances (video at bottom of page)
Liszt’s La Campanella was based on a piece originally for violin and orchestra by Niccolo Paganini, so this arrangement involves multiple layers of transformations! Here are a few examples of the mash-up elements that I did in the arrangement.
Opening theme from La Campanella.
There are a lot of bells represented by the high register D-sharps.
My opening is in A-flat major instead of G-sharp minor, but uses the same pitches in the left hand. I kept the bells in the Primo’s right hand, and put the melody in the left hand. The secondo part plays all the rolled chords. When arranging 2-hand music for 4-hands, often things need to be spread out in this way, making the piece seem too easy sometimes! I kept some jumps in the upper part by doing hand crossings instead of one-hand jumps.
One of La Campanella’s treacherous jump sections
Much less treacherous in 4-hands! Since much of La Campanella is with both hands in the treble clef, I had to add some extra parts in the bass for the Secondo part to play; here the Jingle Bells melody is mostly in the Secondo.
Another treacherous jump section as well as the repeated notes in the last bar.
The 2-octave jump range is made quite a bit easier by using two hands! But the repeated notes are still as challenging with two hands as with one.
Some very difficult repeated notes and filigree passage-work in the original.
The repeated notes and filigree are spread out between the two hands, making it more fun than stressful to play (but not too easy either!). As before, I put the melody in the Secondo part so that it is not left with nothing to do!
The lead-up to the final passage features repeated chords, octaves, and difficult jumps in the left hand
All of the above elements are retained, except octaves are turned into single notes because there is not enough space on the piano for both parts to play octaves! The primo part has some extra jumps and hand crossings added for a bit more virtuosic elements, in the spirit of the original!
