“Please don’t play it as it’s written in the music!” – Urtext and playability

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Peter Jost

A music-lesson scene that we all recall most reluctantly: A certain spot repeatedly goes wrong, and the teacher calls out, already nearly in desperation: “Simply play it as it’s written in the music!”

Sounds simple and obvious. If it nevertheless doesn’t work, something must indeed be wrong with the fingers, not with the notes. Especially if we are playing from an Urtext edition whose notes would certainly have been critically reviewed, and so they would have to be all right.

But is that actually always the case?  Couldn’t, however, the playing problem also come from something being wrong with the notes? Continue reading →

Posted in Mahler, Gustav, Monday Postings, notation, Piano quartet (Mahler), Urtext | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Tristan at Troldhaugen – interesting finds in Grieg’s “Lyric Pieces”

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Dominik Rahmer

Among the most popular and successful of Edvard Grieg’s compositions are undoubtedly his “Lyric Pieces” for piano, published between 1867 and 1901 in ten separate volumes and ultimately combined into one complete volume in 1902. Yet though the editions were already reprinted thousands of times during his lifetime, many errors and oddities still remain unaltered to this day…
Continue reading →

Posted in autograph, Grieg, Edvard, Lyric Pieces (Grieg), Monday Postings, piano solo, sketches, variant reading | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Does it work or doesn’t it? About page turns in the music

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Annette Oppermann

Haven’t you, too, sometimes wondered in a concert why the music that the musicians on stage are using takes such strange forms? Some pianists place on the music rack a big card to which are clipped the complete movements of a Bach suite in scaled-down copies. Even at quartet evenings, pasted-together copies readily hang down off the music stands to the right and left – not to mention lieder recitals, where whole mountains of custom-made fold-up sheets are assembled. The reason for this is obvious: where the music page ends, one either can’t or won’t want to turn the page there. But as an editor of practical Urtext editions, I’m asking myself then, “Isn’t there some other way?” Continue reading →

Posted in Bach, Johann Sebastian, Monday Postings, Reger, Max, Schubert, Franz | Tagged , | 2 Comments

The music world will sit up and take notice! On the new Urtext edition of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A Major KV 331

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Wolf-Dieter Seiffert

You presumably know Mozart’s A-major Piano Sonata KV 331 (with the “alla turca” rondo). One of the best-known sonatas, if not THE best-known, of the entire piano repertoire. And yet it is the bitter truth that to this day we all play this famous sonata incorrectly, not in any event like Mozart wanted it. How so? Up to now there has been no single error-free music edition of this famous piece. The 19th century had garbled the sonata almost beyond recognition: Urtext editions of the 20th century (even ours so far) have essentially had to make use of the first edition (“opus 6” in the Artaria publishing house, Vienna, 1784) as the best available basis for the text because Mozart’s autograph (up to the last page of the “alla turca”) was lost. Continue reading →

Posted in autograph, Monday Postings, Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, new source, piano solo, Piano Sonata K. 331 (W.A. Mozart), revision, Urtext | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Is it OK to add them? – The “missing” low notes in Beethoven’s piano sonatas

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Norbert Gertsch

Here’s a topic that pianists have been discussing since the 19th century: Is it OK to change the music text in Beethoven’s piano sonatas (and, of course, anywhere else, too) and extend the pitch range downward at several spots in the left hand? Because even though to some extent keys for the low pitches E1 to C1 were in fact available on English pianos from ca. 1800, they were clearly first “used” in Beethoven’s piano sonatas, however, only later. Up until the piano sonata op. 101, composed between 1815 and the start of 1817, Beethoven faithfully respected the limitation of the pitch-range down to F1 – his music was after all supposed to be playable on a “normal” piano. Continue reading →

Posted in autograph, Beethoven, Ludwig van, first edition, letter, Monday Postings, Murray Perahia, piano solo, Piano Sonata op. 10 nr. 3 (Beethoven), Piano Sonata op. 101 (Beethoven), Piano Sonata op. 106 (Beethoven), Piano Sonata op. 109 (Beethoven), Piano Sonata op. 110 (Beethoven), Piano Sonata op. 111 (Beethoven), Piano Sonata op. 14 nr. 1 (Beethoven), Piano Sonata op. 2 nr. 3 (Beethoven), Piano Sonata op. 31 nr. 2 (Beethoven), Piano Sonata op. 7 (Beethoven), pitch range | Tagged , , , | 21 Comments

About the difficulties of notating ornamentation – The riddle of a neighbouring trill tone in Chopin’s Berceuse

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Norbert Müllemann

J.S. Bach, table of ornamentation (see below)

The topic “ornamentation” in music is truly endless. We have to do with a phenomenon that takes place on the border between notation and performance. Ornaments are in the truest sense of the word a “decoration” that the performer adds to the written-out or printed music text. Ornaments were therefore mostly not notated at all in earlier music. Performance tradition taught the interpreter at what spots he or she could fit in whichever embellishments. For instance, the flautist Rachel Brown impressively shows in our edition of the 12 Fantasias by Georg Philipp Telemann (HN 556, scroll to page six to discover the English notes on performance practice), what can be made of the music text, indeed, what must be performed to be stylistically correct. Thus at its core ornamentation always has to do with improvisation. Continue reading →

Posted in Bach, Johann Sebastian, Berceuse op. 57 (Chopin), Chopin, Frédéric, General, Monday Postings, notation, ornamentation, piano solo | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

An amusing story and a serious problem – On Mendelssohn’s first concert piece for clarinet, basset horn and piano

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Peter Jost

For composers, commissions or dedications of works could pay off, most of the time in cash or valuables – we think of the snuffboxes popular in the 18th century –, on occasion also in positions or annual pensions. On the other hand, composing a music piece in return for preparing a meal would, however, be very unusual. But the maxim a “favourite dish for a favourite piece of music” does in fact apply to the genesis of Mendelssohn’s Concert Piece in F Minor Op. 113 (MWV Q 23) for clarinet, basset horn and piano. Continue reading →

Posted in autograph, Concert Piece op. 113 (Mendelssohn Bartholdy), first edition, genesis, Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix, Monday Postings, piano + clarinet + basset horn, variant reading | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

On a terribly wrong dynamic marking in the first movement of K. 499

Posted on March 30, 2015 by Wolf-Dieter Seiffert

In my last blog posting I reported on my current, exciting editorial work on Mozart’s string quartets. It was about a small, but yet audible correction of a “mfp” in the cello solo of the slow movement of the second “Prussian” String Quartet K. 589. To my way of thinking, all the editions misrepresent this spot. Today’s brief posting augments this: It’s about the start of the development in the first movement of the so-called “Hoffmeister” Quartet K. 499. This spot makes still more blatantly clear why to date Mozart’s string quartets are not yet available in the best possible music edition. Continue reading →

Posted in autograph, dynamics, first edition, Hagen-Quartet, Monday Postings, Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, string quartet, String Quartet K. 499 (W.A. Mozart) | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The melancholy horn – a short excursion into the monumental realm of Russian music

Posted on March 16, 2015 by Dominik Rahmer

The repertoire of the G. Henle publishing house is traditionally very German-/Austrian-oriented – from Bach and Handel via Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven to Schumann, Brahms and Berg. Yet for us, 2015 is dominated by Russian music.… Continue reading →

Posted in Élégie op. 44 (Glasunow), G. Henle Publishers, Glasunow, Alexander, Monday Postings, Mussorgsky, Modest, piano + horn, piano + viola, Rachmaninoff, Sergei, Rêverie op. 24 (Glasunow), Scriabin, Alexander, Urtext | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Better late than never: Leoš Janáček at Henle publishers

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Annette Oppermann
Portrait Janacek

Leoš Janáček

It is always a special moment whenever a new name joins the series of composers in our Urtext catalogue – and this is especially so in the current instance, because with the wind suite Mládí by Leoš Janáček (1854–1928), the 20th century in the area of Czech music also arrives at Henle publishers. That the publishing house can first bring this about in its 6th decade after founding is incidentally also fitting: it was, namely, just in this decade of Janáček’s life that he was most productive owing to private, professional and political reasons. Continue reading →

Posted in autograph, copy, first edition, G. Henle Publishers, Janácek, Leos, Mládí (Janácek), Monday Postings, winds | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment