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.
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