Sonatina in C for Mandolin

In 1796 Beethoven, then twenty five, spent several months in Prague on a concert tour. There he met Countess Josephine Clary, a gifted singer who also played the mandolin, and he wrote a handful of short pieces for her to play with a keyboard: two sonatinas, an Adagio and a set of variations. They are small, friendly pieces, and the only music Beethoven ever wrote for the mandolin.

They were not printed until long after his death and are still little known outside the mandolin world, where they are treasured. Mandolinists know the Sonatina in C well, and almost no tab site carries it, which is odd for music written for this exact instrument by one of the most famous composers there is.

It is marked Allegro and opens with the mandolin running up a C major arpeggio in sixteenth notes and tumbling back down, the kind of figure that lies naturally under a mandolinist's pick. This page carries the opening theme, eighteen bars: the first phrase, a turn to G, and the return that closes it. It is written at doubled note values so the sixteenths read as eighths, and nothing had to be simplified to fit.

Beethoven knew how the instrument works. The arpeggios cross all four courses, from the open G to the C at the eighth fret of the E course, and almost every note falls on a string change, so the whole piece is a study in clean alternate picking across the courses. Practice the first bar alone until the pick moves down and up across the strings without a hitch, then add the bars one at a time. At the top speed it sparkles.