I’m sharing my adaptation and arrangement for intermediate string ensemble of Scott Joplin’s hauntingly beautiful concert waltz Bethena. I’ve attempted to arrange this piece twice previously, once for KJSB 1.0 back in 2020, and then again in 2022. Each of these previous attempts suffered from fatal flaws.

This most recent version received multiple thumbs ups from the 7th, 8th and 9th grade strings students in Knights of Jazz String Band — a very tough crowd. So, third time’s the charm and it seems I’ve got something going with this version!

In this arrangement I managed to deploy a classic Ragtime/early jazz device for modulation between keys to make it sound like there is movement to a distant key for the B section, when in fact it stays in the original key! I again use sleight of hand to “modulate” back to the original key for a recap of the A melody.

Download the arrangement