Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
We should have 48 strings, assuming it is an 00A that was added. The Villa-Lobos Concerto calls for an A-natural in the over-octave or zero-octave. When master composers call for something new, the manufacturers should accomodate them. That is how instruments improved all through the 19th century.
I didn’t mean the score was online, but if you search, you should be able to find the dealer in New York I got mine from. I don’t remember their name. They publish a lot of early music scores and facsimiles.
I will try that! I usually write my pedals in Technique language, so I can determine the type size, usually 10, apart from the Expression language. I can’t change the accidentals, though. That is a pain.
I don’t think the Zingel edition is expensive, and if you ignore his small-size added notes, you have the melody and the original figured bass. There is another edition I found online that is also “urtext.” The manuscript it comes from, it is worth noting, is a copy of C.P.E. Bach’s original, it is not in his writing, it is from later.
The Weidensaul edition has fully realized ornaments, but I don’t agree with her realizations.
The Lawrence edition is based on the manuscript, and is largely accurate, stylish, and extremely challenging. It sounds magnificent.
I have been preparing my own, and there are some choices that can be made in harmonizing the bass line. But so far, mine seems to be overall harder than Miss Lawrence’s.
It is worth noting that no less than three of the greatest harpists of the 20th century agreed that the amazingly beautiful and moving adagio is most evocatively played as a second slow movement, contrasting the two allegro movements. These are Nicanor Zabaleta, Marcel Grandjany, and Lucile Lawrence. You can sort of transcribe Zabaleta’s edition from his recording. Grandjany’s is really a recomposing of the work in his own style. It varies greatly. I have heard it performed both ways, and it is always much duller to hear it adagio-allegro-allegro, even if that is how the “urtext” is written. Some of Bach’s music follows that pattern, and other music follows the fast-slow-fast pattern. Since this piece much resembles the Italian Concerto by his father, I think it is far best to use that pattern, and give the Adagio full due by positioning it in the middle. Practically speaking, you need a break after playing the first allegro before playing the second. They are quite long movements.
If you want to prepare your own editing, you must study CPE Bach’s very enjoyable Versuch and Neumann’s book on ornamentation. You have to be able to interpret the ornaments correctly. Then you must think about if they need to be adapted to the sound of the modern harp and the flow of the musical line and what fingering will be most expressive as well as felicitous. Do you double the bass line? Must be considered. Double the melody? Perhaps. The more you know about keyboard music and the harpsichord, the better for understanding. It is worth looking at Bach’s other sonatas, such as the Hamburg sonatas, or was it the Wurttenberg? Or the Frankfurters?
I have performed the sonata several times, and that is my advice on the subject.
Harpists are nutty. Piano training has many more schools of playing. They have as many schools of playing within France as we might have worldwide. Do they all claim to be superior? Perhaps it is “chacun a son gout.”
Any method is a problem if it isn’t serving a greater goal, to make greater music.
Harpists are nutty. Piano training has many more schools of playing. They have as many schools of playing within France as we might have worldwide. Do they all claim to be superior? Perhaps it is “chacun a son gout.”
Any method is a problem if it isn’t serving a greater goal, to make greater music.
Harpists are nutty. Piano training has many more schools of playing. They have as many schools of playing within France as we might have worldwide. Do they all claim to be superior? Perhaps it is “chacun a son gout.”
Any method is a problem if it isn’t serving a greater goal, to make greater music.
You can play it all in flats, why not, if you are sounding the same pitches? But clarity is another matter. If it is highly chromatic, will it sound at all good as harp music? Most Bach does not, whether people play it or not.
There are schools offering Salzedo training with full scholarships, too, so don’t let money be the issue.
There are schools offering Salzedo training with full scholarships, too, so don’t let money be the issue.
