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Caprice no. 29


Back to etude-land with number 29! This one rips by: you know it's supposed to be fast with the marking of allegro assai. Obviously, scale work is a major theme in this caprice, but I was also surprised to find that bowing work was a big focus too. 

If you have read my other posts, you know that I believe Campagnoli was very specific in his compositions, and that one should not overlook his indications for bowings and fingering. So, I went against my instinct to correct for the bowing in the triplet section, starting at measure 21. What I found was very interesting and also made complete sense once I thought about it.
 

With the slur-dot pattern the temptation is always to play down-up. However, if you play strictly as it comes, sometimes, you will play up-down (mm. 26-28), and sometimes you will play down-up (mm. 21-25; 29-33). And at the very end of the caprice, you will end down-bow. All of this leads me to believe that Campagnoli knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted to train the player to have wicked good bow control. Which is exactly the way I felt after learning this caprice!

I did make one little bowing correction, in measure 8. I displaced the slur break by one 16th-note in measure 8, to keep the pattern of the previous bowings.

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