David Fenton wrote: "This doesn't really mean anything about what Mahler originally wrote, as it's not necessarily the case that the editions that are in the public domain are going to be the best representations of the composer's original scoring."
First off, I believe my original disclaimer concerning the amount of my research - ten minutes - put into the answer of this question was adequate. Second, I'll lay some bets that the horn transpositions in the symphonies were not were not changed. If the publisher had been changing Mahler's earlier horn parts in different keys into horn in F, then it would be unlikely that Mahler's separate F and Bb trumpet parts, or the trumpet parts that switch back and forth between F and Bb, would have been left alone, since the long soprano F trumpet was rapidly becoming just as obsolete as any writing in horn for other keys. Third, of _course_ the PD editions do not reflect the latest in research, but to say that "This doesn't really mean anything about what Mahler originally wrote" is really going off the deep end with this. Even the worst, bowdlerized 19th century publications reflect _something_ about what the composer wrote! Or, if you meant "This doesn't really mean anything about what Mahler originally wrote [concerning horn keys]" I would still have to say that, for our purposes on this list, this evidence stands until other evidence is brought forward. I'll still nominate Mahler symphonies as an excellent example until of consistent writing for F horn. Raymond Horton On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 4:25 PM, David W. Fenton <lists.fin...@dfenton.com>wrote: > On 5 Nov 2010 at 12:46, Raymond Horton wrote: > > > a quick look through all the Mahler horn parts on > > IMSLP.org found nothing but F horn > > This doesn't really mean anything about what Mahler originally wrote, > as it's not necessarily the case that the editions that are in the > public domain are going to be the best representations of the > composer's original scoring. > > In general, the public domain scores available on IMSLP that are not > newly edited from decent sources are not to be trusted. They are > useful for what they are, but certainly not for setting textual > questions like this one. > > -- > David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com > David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > Finale@shsu.edu > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale > _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
