The charm of the unsettling. A special autograph correction of Mozart’s in the finale of the F-major string quartet K. 590

Posted on September 19, 2016 by Wolf-Dieter Seiffert

Mozart connoisseurs and admirers know of course about what is bizarre in the finale of his very last string quartet, K. 590. In its development the harshness of the tone language is particularly unparalleled in the Mozart oeuvre. But the unsettling already starts shortly before the end of the first section: The otherwise so airily sparkling sixteenth notes stall all of a sudden in an almost stranded-like repetitive three-note kink. It is just this spot that Mozart vehemently corrected in his manuscript. The investigation of this correction offers us at hand an analytical key to the understanding of this absolutely special movement. Continue reading →

Posted in articulation, F-major string quartet K. 590, Monday Postings, Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, string quartet | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Don’t miss a beat! The first movement of Saint-Saëns’ 2nd piano concerto

Posted on September 5, 2016 by Peter Jost

As editors we are occasionally confronted with questions that at first glance appear straightforward. Continue reading →

Posted in autograph, measure numbering, Monday Postings, piano + orchestra, Piano Concerto op. 22 (Saint-Saëns), Saint-Saëns, Camille | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Summer break

Posted on August 8, 2016 by publisher

Even our composers are known to have taken time off in the summer for R & R in the mountains or at the sea. Continue reading →

Posted in Monday Postings | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Anton Webern: Now also “in blue”!

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Norbert Müllemann

We are always welcoming new composers to our Henle catalogue. As our readers certainly know, we publish only music that is copyright-free; you could say that the composer must have already been dead for 70 years in order to make it into our repertoire. Such major occurrences were, for instance, the first Henle editions of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s works in 2014, or just recently, the Allegro barbaro by Béla Bartók (see the blog posting on this by my colleague Annette Oppermann). Continue reading →

Posted in autograph, G. Henle Publishers, Glenn Gould, Monday Postings, piano solo, Urtext, Variations op. 27 (Webern), Webern, Anton | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

France sets the tone – new Urtext editions in the “blue jersey”

Posted on July 11, 2016 by Dominik Rahmer

It isn’t only with the European Football Championship 2016 that France is the focus of attention (alas, it wasn’t quite enough last night to win the title) – numerous new Urtext editions of French composers are just about to come out in the Henle publishing house. Continue reading →

Posted in articulation, Chausson, Ernest, Fauré, Gabriel, horn, Monday Postings, Morceau de Concert op. 94 (Saint-Saëns), piano + horn, Ravel, Maurice, Saint-Saëns, Camille, variant reading | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

All good Viennese come in threes: Dittersdorf, Hoffmeister and Vanhal

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Annette Oppermann

Johann Baptist Vanhal

With our most recent Urtext edition of Johann Baptist Vanhal’s double bass concerto (HN 979), our series of the great classical double bass concertos is complete: For Vanhal’s concerto, just like those by Dittersdorf (HN 759) and Hoffmeister (HN 721), is written for the historic “Viennese double bass tuning” that towards the close of the 18th century first generally helped to bring this instrument to “soloist” status. A modern, practical edition of these works is always a special challenge, such as we’ve already made the topic of an earlier blog.

 

Tobias Glöckler, a musician and editor extremely experienced in practical as well as philological matters, was again willing to take on this task. In producing the Vanhal concerto, he now presents anew an edition optimally coordinating double bassists’ needs. Continue reading →

Posted in articulation, copy, double bass, Double Bass Concerto (Vanhal), Monday Postings, Tobias Glöckler, Vanhal, Johann Baptist | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on All good Viennese come in threes: Dittersdorf, Hoffmeister and Vanhal

A Henle customer suggests corrections to the text of Max Reger’s 2nd Cello Suite. How do we as publishers respond to this?

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Wolf-Dieter Seiffert

Today, a brief but we hope all the more valuable contribution for all cellists. You may also consider it a bow to the great composer Max Reger who died almost exactly 100 years ago (on 11 May 1916).

At the start of the 1990s, my Urtext edition of the “Three Suites for Cello Solo,” Opus 131c, together with the edition of the three violin suites HN 468, opened the series of our Reger works in Henle Urtext editions that have meanwhile grown very numerous. Reger’s manuscript of these three magnificent works has remained lost. The works were first published by the N. Simrock publishing house in July 1915, thus less than a year before Reger’s death. From our Reger thematic catalogue published a few years ago you can learn all the important information about the genesis and sources of Opus 131c. Here, exclusively for our blog readers, is the scan of the respective pages. Continue reading →

Posted in first edition, Monday Postings, Reger, Max, Three Suites op. 131c for Violoncello solo (Reger), Urtext, violoncello | 2 Comments

A “bad apple” in Camille Saint-Saëns’ 2nd cello sonata?

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Peter Jost

Saint-Saëns was likely far from the “genius thinking” of romanticism. Music being, he once stated, the art so to speak of putting together tones, and concerning his artistic production, he would then naturally produce works like an apple tree produces apples. This comparison may at first appear strange, but fully conforms to Saint-Saëns’ aesthetic, he who prioritized form and craftsmanship in composing.

Editors of Urtext editions benefit from this matter-of-fact view inasmuch as Saint-Saëns considered the conception of his works as usually determined from the drafting stage. Whereas many of his contemporaries still made sometimes far-reaching modifications in copies or galley proofs, he normally kept to the autograph version without changing any detail right through to publication. Continue reading →

Posted in autograph, first edition, Monday Postings, notation, piano + violoncello, pitch range, Saint-Saëns, Camille, Sonata for Violoncello and Piano no. 2 in F major op. 123 (Saint-Saëns), variant reading, versions | Tagged | 1 Comment

“… more or less at the most extreme limit of what can be achieved on the piano”: Busoni arranges Bach

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Norbert Müllemann

The second edition naming the two composers, Bach · Busoni, on the cover is going to appear shortly in the Henle catalogue. Busoni’s famous arrangement of the no less famous Bach chaconne has already been available here for some time. To follow now are the 10 chorale preludes.

We must almost say 11½ chorale preludes, for added in our edition to the well-known 10 organ arrangements is, on the one hand, a second version of no. 1 (“Komm, Gott, Schöpfer”), now being made available for the first time since it was originally published in 1916; this second version, only part of which is a truly new music text, may count as “half” of a new chorale prelude. The transcription of the organ chorale prelude “Aus tiefer Not schrei’ ich zu dir” is, on the other hand, a completely new work. Our editors discovered the piece in Busoni’s estate (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin · Preußischer Kulturbesitz). The source can meanwhile be viewed digitalized; the work is now appearing, though, for the first time in an Urtext edition. Continue reading →

Posted in Bach, Johann Sebastian, Busoni, Ferruccio, Chorale Preludes (Johann Sebastian Bach), Monday Postings, piano solo, transcription, variant reading, Vladimir Horowitz | Tagged | 2 Comments

The Henle Library app. Behind the scenes – part 2.

Posted on May 2, 2016 by Norbert Gertsch

In part 1 of this little “Behind the scenes” blog, I wrote about the demands of realising our Urtext editions in an app that made the most of the medium. I also discussed what this meant as far as the layout of the musical text was concerned and how we needed to be as flexible as possible. In today’s post we’ll be looking at a few of the additional functions and the presentation of the non-music texts in our editions. Continue reading →

Posted in Android, App, Digital, Henle Library, iOS, Monday Postings, Tablet | Leave a comment