Time flies! Summer has arrived and our blog is taking some time off, too. A good opportunity to relax at the beach with some light reading. Our authors will make good use of the rest period to think about new topics to write about. And you can look forward to signing in again on the 16th of September 2019.
Meanwhile, we wish all readers a fine and relaxing summer!
G. Henle Verlag
In a few weeks a long-cherished dream of mine will come true: This 2019 autumn we are going to publish Mozart‘s early Viennese String Quartets K. 168 – 173, in Urtext (HN 1121 and HN 7121). To be sure, the text that I’ve edited and our production team has magnificently typeset and printed will not be presented as any totally “new Mozart”, but in the end will feature in detail many, many improvements for the quartet-playing profession. Continue reading
Title page of the Libro Quarto (1656). Source: http://data.onb.ac.at/rep/10040126
How time flies! – this hardly original realisation came to me as I began planning my new Froberger blog post a week ago, since I had the feeling of having just recently written the previous post on this topic. Not by a long shot! It was three years ago in 2016 when I introduced our edition to celebrate Froberger’s 400th birthday. But this cross section was supposed to be, so to speak, only an “appetizer”, an overview of the keyboard genres that Froberger employed time and again: toccata, fantasia, canzone, suite (Froberger would always use the equivalent term “partita”). The suites are without doubt his most famous works, and of these we have, of course, chosen for our edition of selected works the most popular one, the partita “auff die Mayerin” whose individual movements present variations on the popular folk song of that time. Continue reading
Anyone who compares the edition currently on the market of Saint-Saëns’ Romance for Flute and Piano op. 37 from the original publishing house Durand with its first edition appearing in 1874 will quickly notice a striking difference in measure 102, at the end of the piece’s repeatedly varied main idea: Continue reading
An Urtext edition – and not just only from Henle publishers – is generally considered to be based on a critical examination of all a work’s sources, which are then also described and evaluated in a commentary section and used to document the editorial decisions. Looking more closely at these Comments in our Urtext editions, you might think that these sources include only music manuscripts and printed editions. This is, of course, only half the story, for besides such primary sources, numerous secondary sources – be they reviews or programme booklets, publishing-house business records or the composer’s diaries and correspondence – also play a role in giving important information for the edition – for example, about the dating of a work or the authorisation of an arrangement. This other type of source is usually mentioned only very briefly in Henle’s Preface – but this should not belie the fact that finding and evaluating these sources can sometimes be more time consuming than merely editing the work. Continue reading
We report as a rule in our blog posts on current publishing-house work and interesting finds made whilst preparing our new editions. But even our older editions in the archives are by no means “forgotten”, but are repeatedly compared with the results of current research and then reviewed or updated as needed in the course of re-issues. A very recent example comes from Robert Schumann’s Fantasiestücke op. 73 for piano and clarinet (HN 416). Continue reading
In February 2016, over three years ago, we launched the iOS version of our Henle Library app. A great deal has happened since then, not only as a result of what we ourselves have done but also due to Apple and the iPad itself. So, it’s time we gave you a little update about what has been going on! Continue reading
It is extremely rare for us to be able to publish a real first edition. But this happened once again a few weeks ago with my Urtext edition of the three piano-trio fragments, K. 442 by Mozart (HN 1379). In the appendix to this edition we offer completely unknown music scored for piano trio: a movement in D major, a good 350 measures long, well constructed and fairly easy to play. The composer? Well, that’s the question. No, it is not by Mozart, though the unfortunate Köchel number 442 would lead us to believe that here is a Mozart three-movement piano trio, which never before existed. Continue reading
Johann Sebastian Bach
The Henle blogging community will, we hope, not be disappointed that my text today has, at first glance, nothing to do with the daily Henle editing routine. Normally, we report here about tricky editorial problems and offer solutions. But today – not a sign of solving anything. My posting is a question, almost a cry for help on a topic that has been bothering me for weeks. But let’s start with a domestic scene. Continue reading
Henle Verlag is a traditional publishing house and can look back on a proud publishing history: last year we celebrated our 70th birthday. But since the digital age has left its mark on us as well, we launched our very successful Henle Library a few years ago, putting almost all our Urtext catalog on iPad and Android tablets. We are also actively sharing Henle news with you on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Continue reading