Quest for Scores

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

Here’s a question for you scholars out there:

Can you find the original scores for Grandjany’s arrangement of the Handel Prelude and Toccata, and for Salzedo’s transcription of the Sarabande from the Fourth Concert Royal by Couperin?

I can’t find anything similar, even in the actual 4th Concert Royal, and I wonder if these guys actually composed these pieces and pretended they were transcriptions, which was quite the common practice in their time if you wanted to write something in the style of an older period. Fritz Kreisler was the granddaddy of this practice, composing wonderful concerti and saying they were discoveries of old manuscripts.

And, by the way, to write in the baroque style, especially that of Couperin, is remarkably difficult.

[Author]

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