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From: | Lukas-Fabian Moser |
Subject: | Re: Bach, beams, and benchmarks |
Date: | Mon, 25 Mar 2019 15:37:05 +0100 |
User-agent: | Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/60.5.1 |
Yes, thanks. I should mention that "copying this from another source" is a bad idea _unless_ you are creating an Urtext since things like the fingering are copyrighted (except for quite old editions). This may be particularly infuriating concerning the Bach solo string pieces since a) the more complex passages have only one feasible and obvious fingering: they are written for violin/cello rather than against them. b) cluttering the score with pre-printed fingering is more annoying than helpful anyway, particularly so where a "creative element" is indisputible since the editor has diverged from the obvious best choice. In general it tends to be a better idea for legal reasons to copy Urtext editions: their claim to copyright is actually constrained to the graphical elements rather than the musical content. But I found that extensively "helpful" editions particularly of the solo suites/sonatas are not actually helpful for performance preparation since they are a distraction and impede with the player's "breathing room". I think there a some questionable presuppositions in your reasoning (while you're obviously right regarding the legal aspects, and I also tend to agree that it's nice to have the "breathing room" an edition without printed fingerings leaves the player). Especially, I'd challenge the term "obvious best choice". Even if you do not abuse the instrument (and the work) and try, for example, to play the D major cello suite on a four-stringend instrument (which is not what Bach intended, but is possible - albeit quite hard - and in any case absolutely common), there are many reasons why there might be more than one possible and sensible fingering for a given passage, no matter if it's "more complex" or not. Hands and tastes differ, and so does the degree by which the player of "old" music is willing to adopt historical fingering styles that generally faded into oblivion in the course of centuries. On the cello (which is the only instrument I can account for), aspects of fingering style that changed over time include - the attitude towards using open strings, and so on. For instance, in Abraham's edition, bar 20 starts with 1-2-2. A valid choice (which is also in Wenzinger's standard edition), but one I would never use, preferring 1-2-1 to avoid the awkward arm movement involved in preparing a clean Barré. Now this is hardly a "more complex passage" ... but I'm not quite sure how to define that term, anyway. (Except for a funny circular and self-contradictory definition: "A more complex passage is one where you need a fingering to survive, and in these, the fingering is obvious since the piece is written for the instrument instead of against it." ;-) ) Lukas |
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