Once the darling of the vaudeville stage, the stradella accordion is largely neglected in contemporary art music circles. One reason for this neglect is the design of its bass system, which is limited by two rows of single notes ranging over a single octave, together with corresponding major, minor, seventh and diminished chord buttons in fixed voicings. In contrast, the free-bass accordion, or classical accordion, features a bass system where each button produces a single pitch ranging over multiple octaves. This system is inherently more flexible, and consequently is featured in most contemporary composition. In this article I present a…
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