Duets yesterday evening with my intermediate violinist friend. First up was another find from IMSLP, the "Douze petits Duos faciles" by Charles Auguste de Bériot. I wasn't too impressed with the first one; I remarked that we played it better than it deserved. The second was better, but the third one was a little tough for sight-reading. And later on in the collection, there's a scherzo in B minor with a trio in B major. I suppose de Bériot figured that beginners should suffer through five sharps like the rest of us. :-)
I really like IMSLP: it's a wonderful site to find obscure mid-nineteenth century to early twentieth century music. (Earlier than that, the style of music printing makes it hard for us moderns to read; after that, you run into copyright issues). There was an interesting article about a year ago in the New York Times about IMSLP. I have no qualms about using it for public domain music. If a publisher wants to go to the trouble to create new editions of public domain music, like Henle and the complete Haydn quartets, that's worth my money. But those publishers who just push out copies of nineteenth century engravings (sometimes messing them up with incorrect rehearsal letters or ruining the page turns) don't deserve my patronage.
We then continued with the Three Very Easy Duets by Kalliwoda (Kalivoda), Op. 178. These are the first three of a set of twelve, it seems (the Op. 178-181). Even easier than the ones we played at the beginning of the month, they're pretty good (definitely better than the de Bériot). One could wish for a little more creativity on Kalliwoda's part (really, does every sonata form development section have to start with a bar rest for the second violin, who then imitates what the first violin plays?), but I think they're worth playing. But then, I do have a soft spot for the music of obscure composers!
So now I'm interested to see some earlier music, the harder-to-read kind...
ReplyDeleteHmmm, it claimed it was going to publish my comment with my name, but it seems to have lied. This is Amanda.
ReplyDeleteThe first PDF linked to from this page is a good example:
ReplyDeletehttp://imslp.org/wiki/6_Concertant_Duos_for_2_Violins,_WIV_7-12_%28Op.20%29_%28Viotti,_Giovanni_Battista%29
Even ignoring the poor quality of the scan, I find the eighteenth century music printing style to be much harder to read than the nineteenth. Maybe it's just because I need to get used to it.
Thank you for introducing me to the IMSLP site.
ReplyDeleteThey have a nice blog that they call the IMSLP Journal.
But the feature that I found most fascinating was being able to search their music by melody! As a test, I typed in the first six notes of "Happy Birthday." I was amused and impressed to find composers from Mozart, Mendelssohn and Brahms had used this progression. And the search is key independent, as it would have to be. You can find the progression in the Allegro of Mozart's String Quartet No.1, in Elijah by Mendelssohn and in the Vivace of Brahms' Violin Sonata No.2, among others.
It would seem this to be a useful tool when constructing variations on a theme in the style of various composers.
Hmm...maybe it's time to start working again on my Happy Birthday variations, even though I wouldn't be able to publish them until at the earliest 2030, when Happy Birthday goes out of copyright.
ReplyDeleteIn the European Union, the copyright expires on Dec 31, 2016, so you might want to get started at least on the International Edition of your Variations.
ReplyDeleteIt is likely that if your variations did not split the first note (Ha-ppy) it would not infringe, as it would then be the melody for "Good Morning to All."
In any case, you are only prohibited from singing HB for profit. Otherwise every time there is a birthday party, royalties would be owed.