At 02:19 05-01-16, Bruce Jacobs wrote:
>From the perspective of an amateur lover of Froberger, and one who has
>purchased six of the volumes.
>It is rather perplexing reading the Bahrenreiter website trying to
>make sense out of this.
A foretaste of the similar problems in store for
the reader of the actual scores.
> Early editions say “to be released in five
> volumes. Later editions say "to be released in eleven volumes"
> or something like that.
I started off naively buying all the volumes as
they were issued. And the project just grew like
Topsy. In retrospect I realized that there was
no overall vision of what was involved before
Vol. I was published. The volumes were (and are)
very expensive and by the time that Vol. IV was
divided into a and b, one felt the victim of a
marketing ploy. The format with its glossy blue
covers is not convenient to handle and several
together are hard to hold vertical on the shelf.
>The enormity of it is due to two factors, aside from minimal duplication.
>- pages of analysis equal to the pages of music in some of the volumes
This is an age in which lengthy writings are
wrongly assumed to be correspondingly valuable.
>- in some pieces, large areas above each system to contain all the variants.
The variants are more often than not a big
distraction, attempting to seduce the player by
inviting him or her to step aside and to pick and
choose, mix and match, among them. They give the
false impression of comprehensive authority, but
should have been relegated to the editor's
report. I admit that my biassed viewpoint
suggests that these works are primarily meant to
be played, not analysed or catalogued. But when
faced with, for example, Vol.III, pp.64-5
(Partita FBWV616) it is almost impossible to read
between the variants and find the editor's
preferred text. The edition is here based on no
less than four conflicting sources and playing
from this score is like trying to drive down a
road with more potholes than original surface.
I have pointed out here before simple errors in
the text accompanying the Blancrocher Tombeau on
p.22/23 of Vol. IV.1 (See 28 April 2014:
Baerenreiter Bach Violin Sonatas). If mistakes
are made in deciphering the Latin text from the
vey clear original, one wonders about the music
itself. I am sure that there are other doubtful transcriptions.
The Adler edition (DTÖ) may be out of date in
some details and is incomplete; but it is
beautifully printed, out of copyright, available
at IMSLP, and some of it has been republished by
Dover at a fair price -- that is, fair in the
USA; in Europe prices of Dover scores are often
inflated to match the prices of European
editions. I have only seen the Howard Scott
edition in libraries. It is in four manageable
and well-printed volumes, thankfully without the
distraction of variants on every page and, unlike
the Baerenreiter, in portrait format.
There are interesting essays here:
http://sscm-jscm.org/v13/no1/schulenberg.html
http://www.sscm-jscm.org/jscm/v13/no1/vanasperen.html
But dont let these keep you away from the instrument!
I just Googled barenreiter froberger and the
second listing was entitled "Bärenreiter Verlag -
German Musid [sic] Edition Prize - Best Edition"! 'Nuff said...
David
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