New Alkan op 35 edition...free

[brianedward]

I posted this topic in the sheet music section as well, but thought it might get more exposure here.

Hello all, I have a gift for those interested in Alkan's op 35 etudes. I have computer typeset the whole set and published them on my website in pdf format. I really enjoy this set of etudes, and I really dislike the Bote & Bock(master's music reprint) and Billaudot editions, because I find them visually cluttered and hard to read. In addition to that, these scores are hard to come by, and expensive, at least the billaudot is. So I began this project last summer in hopes that other people felt the same way about these editions as I did. I have completed what I am calling the "beta" release, and it is posted on my website. I would greatly appreciate you letting me know if you find any errors, so that the edition can be as accurate as possible. There Is a little bit more information about the edition on my website if you're interested. Also, please refrain from posting the pieces on other websites like imslp or the gutenberg project because I want to have a better idea of how many people are interested in these scores. That way it will help me know if what I am doing is worth while to a lot of people or to just a few. If I feel like there isn't very much interest,  i will spend my free time doing something more useful.

The website is www.brianedwardjarvis.com, and the scores are found by pressing the sheet music button on the left hand side of the page. I have also posted the first three etudes from op 39.

Please leave comments, suggestions or thoughts either on this forum or email me at brianedwardjarvis("at" symbol)gmail(dot)com. Enjoy!

-brian edward jarvis

[allthumbs]

Hey Brian

Good job. That is a lot of work you've done in re-typsetting this!

I'm just curious as to what program you used in doing this.

allthumbs

[brianedward]

Thanks allthumbs, I used finale 2008 and 2009.

[ahinton]

Excellent work (or so it looks following a skim-read, which is sadly all that I have time for right now). One small point; should not the direction at the beginning of no. 4 read "Scintillante"?

Best,

Alistair

[brianedward]

Thank you Alistair, you are very right "Scintillante" not "Sointillante" like I had. Thanks for telling me about it, I just fixed it so it is correct now. Please continue to send comments about anything questionable that you find.

[lontano]

Thank you Alistair, you are very right "Scintillante" not "Sointillante" like I had. Thanks for telling me about it, I just fixed it so it is correct now. Please continue to send comments about anything questionable that you find.

You've done a fine and dedicated job with these Etudes, and obviously have a fine command of the programs you've used to create such an edition.

This is an example of something that's been fluttering around my brain ( )without permission ) lately.

How did music typesetters ever manage to produce such eloquent published editions of works like, let's just say Sorabji's O.C. before computers and programmers existed?

I suppose this is one more glaring indictment of my "world of musical knowledge", and I've been trying to follow the history of music publishing, but what I ended up with was the processes that worked into the early 1800's, but wouldn't seem economically feasible for any large-scale, or highly complex/unusual work by anything less than a very well-funded composer.

I can comprehend the (easier, yet still laborious) methods of the 18th-19th c. but just can't comprehend how the ever more complex works of 20th c. composers were typeset. It has been barely 30 years since software for music typesetting has been around, and even less time since it has been available for all (e.g. all 3 (Mac, Windows, Linux)). I was around at that time and the last work I wrote for piano involved a "repeated disintegration of a "cluster maze"" and it became available through arduous work with file formats (like PostScript) that were just beginning to be exported to various platforms, at a very high price.

So, if anyone wants to point me to a link, or otherwise fill me in on the last pre-computer phase of music typesetting I would be much obliged!

Lontano!

[alessandro]

Dear Lontano,

Concerning the musical aspect of your editorial work, I cannot say a thing, I don't know much about it.
But the design of the sixteenths and 32ths (mainly in the right hand) is not more massively black, not as fine as in the left hand.
And I think you could strive for a little more homogeneity in the annotations such as (for example in étude n° 9) "fort et lourd." (why a dot after 'lourd' ?), "de. même" (why a dot after 'de' ?), "en augm: peu à peu" (why double points after 'augm' ?)...  In "Comme Le Vent" what is 'sferzato', shouldn't that be 'sforzato ?'  You use as abbreviation for 'crescendo' CRES., I would rather prefer CRESC. (but that's maybe a matter of taste), but when you use a point after CRES. in 'Etude 12', you also need to put a point after CRES in bar 169.
So, for all this little details in design, maybe reread or let it reread by someone.

For the rest, and that is really the biggest job, I think you did a truly wonderful job.  (and the look of your website is very funny).

Congratulations and succes with it.

Alessandro.

[ahinton]

Dear Lontano,

Concerning the musical aspect of your editorial work, I cannot say a thing, I don't know much about it.
But the design of the sixteenths and 32ths (mainly in the right hand) is not more massively black, not as fine as in the left hand.
And I think you could strive for a little more homogeneity in the annotations such as (for example in étude n° 9) "fort et lourd." (why a dot after 'lourd' ?), "de. même" (why a dot after 'de' ?), "en augm: peu à peu" (why double points after 'augm' ?)...  In "Comme Le Vent" what is 'sferzato', shouldn't that be 'sforzato ?'  You use as abbreviation for 'crescendo' CRES., I would rather prefer CRESC. (but that's maybe a matter of taste), but when you use a point after CRES. in 'Etude 12', you also need to put a point after CRES in bar 169.
So, for all this little details in design, maybe reread or let it reread by someone.

For the rest, and that is really the biggest job, I think you did a truly wonderful job.  (and the look of your website is very funny).

Congratulations and succes with it.

Alessandro.

It's not lontano's work - it's brianedward's!

Best,

Alistair

[brianedward]

Thanks for correcting that Alistair!

Alessandro, thanks for your comments. I am actually not certain about what you're referring to about the "design of the sixteenths and 32ths. Are you saying that "Comme Le Vent" looks strange because the right hand is so thick, while the left hand is so fine? If so, I think that's just a result of having beamed 32nds against flagged ones. If you look at the original at https://imslp.org/wiki/12_Etudes_in_all_the_Minor_Keys,_Op.39_(Alkan,_Charles-Valentin) you'll see that the Billaudot edition has this same odd right hand heavy look, and I prefer the look of thicker beams in general so I didn't make them thinner (though I did make a personal arrangement of this piece in 2/4 which does alleviate that visual issue).

Alkan uses the abbreviation Cres. Cres: Cresc. Cresc: and sometimes no punctuation at all throughout these etudes, and I haven't found any logic to it. Why a period would be used instead of a colon is beyond me, so when faced with the choice between consistency and accuracy I voted for accuracy. Because If I was comparing a new edition to an old one, I would want to see that Alkan was inconsistent about the spelling. It provides me with a small amount of insight into the composer.

For some reason, Alkan puts periods after nearly every expression mark. I haven't seen this anywhere else so I kept the periods in for the same reason as I left the various crescendo abbreviations in.

I looked into the 'Sferzato' and 'Sforzato' issue, and I think the 'e' is correct after re-examining the billaudot edition at the link above (the copy of the score i used is now safely back at the library that I got it from, so I can't examine it today). That letter in particular is nearly illegible but if you compare the letter in question to the "o" at the end of the word, you will see that they are not the same because of the angle of each letter. Then, further compare the letter in question to other 'e's in the same score, and you should find that it looks more like an 'e' than an 'o'. And I don't speak italian, so I can only look up the different words in the dictionary to see if one definition makes more sense than the other. And currently all of my books are packed because I'm moving soon, so I used wiktionary today and found that Sferzato means whipped, lashed or broken (as in the breaking of a wave), and Sforzato means forced. Neither definition is an obvious fit, but lashed seems more reasonable to me than forced, but that's only my opinion. I'd like to know what other people think about this, especially if there are any italian speakers that can give some feed back about the appropriatness of each word in that passage.

Thanks for the comments Alessandro! Please send more. Also, this is the beta release of this edition, which is why I need everyones help to catch possible errors.

Also, I'm glad you liked my website!

[richard black]

Nice work, Brian. If I have a moment I send you a list of typos - in general, what do people think about the use of all upper-case for instruction? Personally, I prefer upper/lower like normal text.

How did music typesetters ever manage to produce such eloquent published editions of works like, let's just say Sorabji's O.C. before computers and programmers existed?

Slowly! But the results are often very nice. There may actually be some publishers still using hand engraving. I believe Henle edition only went over to computer typesetting a couple of years ago, for instance, once they were sure they could match the (very high) standards of their old-style engraving.

[lontano]

Slowly! But the results are often very nice. There may actually be some publishers still using hand engraving. I believe Henle edition only went over to computer typesetting a couple of years ago, for instance, once they were sure they could match the (very high) standards of their old-style engraving.

That's what I had supposed, but it must be an awfully slow and expensive process, all the more so as the complexity and length of the project goes on. When I look at Sorabji's O.C. just the matter of proofreading the work would be a "magnum opus" even for highly skilled engravers (and how many people worked on specific project?) . I wonder how long and much it cost Sorabji to get that fat manuscript engraved and printed. Maybe Alistair has some idea???

L.

[ahinton]

That's what I had supposed, but it must be an awfully slow and expensive process, all the more so as the complexity and length of the project goes on. When I look at Sorabji's O.C. just the matter of proofreading the work would be a "magnum opus" even for highly skilled engravers (and how many people worked on specific project?) . I wonder how long and much it cost Sorabji to get that fat manuscript engraved and printed. Maybe Alistair has some idea???

L.

No, I don't, except that it may be that it cost him nothing, as his father may have paid for it. Simon Abrahams is now in the process of creating a new correted typeset edition of that score, by the way.

Best,

Alistair

[lontano]

No, I don't, except that it may be that it cost him nothing, as his father may have paid for it. Simon Abrahams is now in the process of creating a new correted typeset edition of that score, by the way.

Best,

Alistair

What a cosmic undertaking that must be. Certainly a labor of love. Does he perform the work (in part or in whole)? I've seen his name referenced here and there but don't know anything about him.

Lontano