That Chopin variants can be exasperating to an editor – who has to do everything possible to provide the musician with one valid text – is well enough known. The idea that we are not alone in our exasperation can, however, be comforting. This in any case happened to me when I began to prepare a revised edition (HN 1334) of the 1st Scherzo in b minor. I came across a document by the famous Chopin pupil and editor Karol Mikuli that shows considerable perplexity. Continue reading
Carnival, Mardi Gras, Fasching: Today, Carnival Monday (“Rosenmontag” in German) is also being celebrated in Munich – although somewhat less exuberantly than in Cologne or Mainz.
If the ideal goal of a critical Urtext edition may be said to be finding out and representing what the composer “actually intended”, then consulting all the relevant sources for the work, comparing them and evaluating their differences is above all its fundamental task.
Search
-
Recent Posts
- “Gabriellas sång” by Brahms?
- Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Rhapsody and the treasures in the Library of Congress
- No end to Rachmaninoff in sight: several annotations to opp. 3 and 16
- Something new from the low register: At long last, Koussevitzky’s Double Bass Concerto op. 3 in Urtext
- On the first version of Verdi’s string quartet – interview with Anselm Gerhard
Tags
accidentals arrangements autograph Bach Bartók Beethoven Brahms Carnival Chopin Christmas clarinet Complete Edition Debussy Double bass Dvorak Fauré first edition Haydn Hoffmeister horn instrumentation Liszt Mendelssohn Mozart notation piano piano sonata Piano Sonatas Rachmaninoff Ravel revision Saint-Saëns Schubert Schumann Scriabin Sonata string quartet trombone urtext variants variations versions viola Violin Sonata Wagner