I should point out that the Weingartner edition is very unreliable as a guide to the composer's intentions. My impression is that it was edited to suit the style and performance practice in vogue in Austria and Germany at that time. I hope that somehow we could see the Schlesinger original, but presumably not the most recent issue in the collected works. When I have time I shall post here the results of my own researches.
The scores differ in parts...
The two orchestral scores here are probably NOT completely from the same plate. cf. the bass trombone and tuba I parts at rehearsal mark 53 (pdf page 79 in both pdfs). the kalmus reprint conforms to current playing practice where the bass trombone has pedal B-flats and the tuba alternating octaves.
regards,
sb
- Hi sb, is that you, "Sixtus"?
- The errors in IMSLP #1107 are probably indicative of it being a fair copy of the original 1900 print. The Kalmus full score, with the pedal B♭s given to Trombone III and the humorous octave jumping given to Tuba I (actually an Ophicleïde, ideally) also conforms with the New Berlioz Edition. Fortunately the parts are correct, and seem to have no indication of having needed to be changed upon discovery of the error, thus evidently having been issued sometime later.
- Addressing the earlier comment by another writer, regarding the reliability of the Malherbe and Weingartner scores generally, there is a consideration of this issue in D. Kern Holoman’s chapter in “The Cambridge Companion to Berlioz”. Weingartner in particular seems to have seen Berlioz through a Wagnerian filter, so that in these scores we very visibly have the horns grouped amongst the woodwinds in a way that does not reflect Berlioz’ instrumental practice, and for an extreme example of Wagnerism, in the parts for the Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale, the low horn parts are given to “Tenorhorns”. Surprising that Berlioz in 1840 wrote for an instrument that Wagner only conceived in the 1850s? Philip Legge @ © talk 13:23, 1 January 2010 (AEDT)
