Heinrich biber

[ctesibius]

Hi Philip,
thank for the valuable info. I ll search for them. Next scan will be the FestiveMesse (formerly attr. to Benevoli). Ballets and other works in DTOe will not be available for long. :--(. I need to solve some problems with the size of the pages. The Dto score is almost unreadable.
I am very proud to have Biber watching my user page! I am happy to make available his works and in general the big monsters (DDT, DTOe, Chorwerk, Palestrina, etc). When I was student I spent so many hours in dark libraries to study them... never understood why they are not available for loan. Availability of music is still the biggest problem today. Probably we can access less then 10% of the surviving scores

Ctesibius

[pml]

You're not wrong. Until recently the university library here (UniMelb) at least permitted staff to borrow volumes from the collected editions, now all of it is excluded from borrowing. Not happy!

The picture of HIF Biber von Bibern serenely contemplating your user page, was of course cropped from your upload of the 8 Sonatæ Violino solo. :)

The Ballet music and other sonatas edited by Jiri Sehnal will have to wait, as you point out. Even if the 30-year urtext rule of the EU were disposed favourably, the volumes would be eligible for a longer protection in the US.

The Missa Salisburgensis will probably need a fairly detailed scan, as with fifty-four staves to the page it's rather dense! You seem to have a scanner that's larger than A4, so that's a help - the score uses every centimeter of paper it can.

Regards, PML

[ctesibius]

Hi,
they say Australia is the best place to live... probably this is an effect. Italy, (I grew up and studied in Venice) has large libraries but the access is so difficult. Same for Spain, Greece and partially for France. Recently I moved to Germany. Here the situation is really good. One can have almost all. And libraries are high-tech compared to the dusty italians where even catalogs are still on paper. Here often libraries have book scanners available to users.

Regarding Benevoli you are right. The score is packed. The bind also make difficult to open the book and the sheets were cut so close to the staves that often the page number is not available. I will try with a book scanner, but it will take a while. An other option is to scale to an A3 sheet with an optical copier and scan the A3 sheets. If you have any better idea let me know

Cheers
Ctesibius

[pml]

Australia has the disadvantage (for some) of being far away from everywhere else, while others like it for that reason! It's a great place to live, except for the height of summer - the recent heatwave being fresh in memory, and contrasting brilliantly with the Ice Age conditions across the British isles on the other side of the globe!...

With DTÖ 20, for my own purposes (typesetting the Kyrie and Plaudite tympana) I scaled my photocopies down to A4 rather than up to A3 (much cheaper!), but that is probably the way to go. You have to be fairly careful to align the score to the plate to ensure you get all 54 staves, but you already know that. At A4 the photographic area is halved compared to A3, so a scan would need ~140% of the dpi one would use for the A3 scan.

The MS facsimile of the first page of the Credo would also be nice to have separately at a slightly higher resolution (enormous as it is).

Regards, PML

[Notenschreiber]

Some news: Bibers Requiem A major and the parts of the Vesperae à 32 are available now at IMSLP.

[pml]

And also the complete Missa Salisburgensis, in all its full 54-staves-to-the-page glory! (This came via University Music Editions, so Ctesibius, I wouldn't worry about making your own scan.)

The Requiem in A and Vespers à 32 are particularly valuable scores, representing the scholarly work of Dr Werner Jaksch, and should be featured scores at some point.

PML ;-)

[ctesibius]

Hi,
I agree. Thanks to all contributors now we have a good range of Biber's works.
Impressed by the last typeset scores!

Ctesibius

[pml]

I've finally added my little typeset of the Battalia, including the famous polytonal quodlibet, "Die liederliche Gesellschaft von allerley Humor", in addition to numerous programmatic depictions of battle, the fife and snare drum, and unusual ways of playing stringed instruments (col legno, left-hand and snap pizzicato, etc).

With two different versions of the string parts, one of which caters for amateur ensembles which have lots of violins and would struggle to divide the violas in four.

Enjoy! PML

[Notenschreiber]

Just in order to continue the "Biber watch" : The fragment of Bibers Missa catholica is now available at IMSLP in another publication of Werner Jaksch.
Maybe someone tries a reconstruction of the missing vocal voices.

[Notenschreiber]

Now another work of Biber has been published by W. Jaksch as first edition at IMSLP: The Missa Contrapuncto.