Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Located now and again amongst the sources for Beethoven’s compositions listed in the composer’s works’ thematic catalogue is a section on a rare but nonetheless informative type of source relevant for each edition: his lists of corrections or proofreading indications that are usually to be found in letters to publishing houses or mediators. A quick cursory skim. Continue reading
Here’s a situation familiar to music lovers: By chance you hear a music piece, usually on the radio, but you just can’t recall the composer. You’re getting more frustrated: this can’t be true, you can sing along with every note – and yet you simply can’t place the piece. That’s exactly what happened to me a few months ago, though as soon as I heard the simple duet accompanied by piano (on the car radio), I knew that something here “just couldn’t be quite right”. Although all too well I recognised the beautiful melody heard at the opening of the piece, but I had certainly never heard the piece itself before. So, the melody had to have come from another context – but from where, from where in the world? And who was the composer of the radio duet? Perhaps something by Mozart unknown to me (shame on me …)? Continue reading
Johann Kuhnau
This year, the revolving authors of our Henle editors’ blog are addressing composer anniversaries at regular intervals, alongside a host of exciting special topics. Just a fortnight ago, my colleague Peter Jost celebrated César Franck’s 200th birthday. Today I’m taking a big step back in music history and commemorating Johann Kuhnau (born 6 April 1660), who died 300 years ago yesterday. Milestone birthdays are generally easier to celebrate than death anniversaries. But yesterday’s 300th anniversary of Kuhnau’s death (5 June 1722) presents an optimal occasion for taking a closer look at this fascinating personality from the 17th/18th centuries. Continue reading
César Franck (1822-1890)
César Franck, whose 200th birthday the music world is celebrating this year, has long split contemporaries and posterity over how to place him in terms of nationality and style. His great opponent and critic during his lifetime was Camille Saint-Saëns, of all people, whose jubilee was last year. And, indeed, in many respects the two were antithetical!
Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915)
As announced in my last blog post, the collected volume of the Etudes op. 8 by Alexander Scriabin has meantime been published – our birthday present for Alexander Scriabin. It contains all twelve etudes, plus a second version of the most famous, No. XII, in the appendix. But more on that later. First, I would like to answer the question with which my last blog post concluded: How is it that the thunderous conclusion of the last etude, with its heaven-storming ascent over the entire keyboard, is notated completely differently in the extant autograph? Continue reading
Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), photo ca. 1908
Arnold Schoenberg, in his letter thanking well-wishers on his 75th birthday in September 1949, said that he had come to terms with the fact that he could no longer count on a full understanding of his work during his lifetime, captioning his statements, partly painfully bitter, partly self-assuredly proud, with the headlining set phrase ‘To gain recognition only after one’s death –– !’. As we know today, the composer’s prophecy came true relatively soon after his death in 1951. Since the 1970s at the latest, he has been undisputedly regarded as one of the most relevant composers in the first half of the 20th century – even though the number of performances of his music still does not keep pace with this worldwide recognition.
A guest contribution by Johannes Behr from the Johannes Brahms Complete Edition, Kiel.
Johannes Brahms, photograph taken in June 1896
(Brahms-Institut at the Musikhochschule Lübeck)
Johannes Brahms died on 3 April 1897, 125 years ago. About three quarters of a year earlier, increasingly weighed down by his fatal illness, he had finally laid down his composer’s pen. In May and June 1896, he had still been working out altogether eleven chorale preludes for organ. At that time, he wrote to Eusebius Mandyczewski that he was practicing ‘penitence and rue with small trifles’ – thus conveying an example of how flippantly he expressed himself about his own music, the more seriously, indeed, that he took it. It was not until 1902 that this collection from his estate, wafting the special aura of the ‘final work’, was published as Opus 122. The eleven chorale preludes have already appeared in both the New Brahms Complete Edition (Series IV) and in an Urtext edition based on it (HN 1368). Continue reading
Well-disposed visitors to our various digital platforms already know that under the motto “Henle4Strings” the focus in 2022 is on the string quartet. So it’s also high time for our blog to start dealing with this topic, especially since – apart from regular reports on the progress of the major Mozart string-quartets project – the genre has not really been properly elucidated here.
Our app is six years old, and we can finally announce that all the works in our Urtext catalogue are now available in the Henle Library app! Continue reading
Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915)
I admit that while typing the heading of this blog post, I had to take a quick look to make sure: Scriabin is just 150 years old? But it’s true. Hence, the Russian pianist and composer is only 2 years older than, for example, Arnold Schoenberg. Although I’m fully aware that Scriabin’s later compositions went beyond the boundaries of tonality, I would instinctively have placed him much further back in the 19th century than the founder of the 12-tone method. But here this post is not supposed to be about a comparison. My astonishment at his late date of birth serves as a good starting point for briefly reviewing the Scriabin editions previously published by G. Henle publishers and the change in style in the Russian composer’s music. Scriabin – a romantic or a “modern”? Continue reading
