Posts Tagged ‘resources’

The Numbering of Vivaldi’s Bassoon Concerti

If you’ve ever played, lis­tened to, or researched any­thing by Anto­nio Vival­di, then you’ve prob­a­bly run into the mish­mash of dif­fer­ent num­ber­ing sys­tems for his works. There are in fact five sep­a­rate cat­a­loging schemes for Vivaldi’s instru­men­tal pieces, each with its own inter­nal log­ic, and there’s no sim­ple way to con­vert from one to anoth­er on the fly. It can thus be incred­i­bly frus­trat­ing to go from a schol­ar­ly arti­cle to per­form­ing edi­tions to crit­i­cal or com­plete works edi­tions to record­ings, as each of those media may well ref­er­ence a dif­fer­ent num­ber for the same piece.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time think­ing about Vivaldi’s 39 bas­soon con­cer­ti. The Meg Quigley Vival­di Com­pe­ti­tion, for which I’m the Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions, uses a dif­fer­ent Vival­di con­cer­to each time around. I wrote the lin­er notes for the first disc of Nad­i­na Mack­ie Jack­son’s series of all the con­cer­ti. Last year I cre­at­ed a new per­form­ing edi­tion of his Con­cer­to in g minor, RV 495. Through­out, I’ve been able to keep all the num­ber­ing sys­tems straight thanks to Jef­frey Lyman’s excel­lent Table of Con­cor­dances: Vival­di Con­cer­ti for Bas­soon. This table lists all 37 com­plete con­cer­ti along with their des­ig­na­tions in each of the five num­ber­ing sys­tems, and builds on work by Trevor Cramer and George Conrey.

My only com­plaint about this table is that it presents the data sort­ed by only one sys­tem, which means that it some­times takes a while to hunt through the oth­er columns to find what you’re look­ing for. So, I decid­ed to make the com­plete­ly sortable ver­sion below. As long as you have Javascript enabled, you can click on any col­umn head­er to sort the con­cer­ti by that num­ber­ing sys­tem. This should make it easy to locate whichev­er num­ber you need. I’ve also added in Vivaldi’s two incom­plete bas­soon con­cer­ti, just for the sake of com­plete­ness. Below the table you’ll find expla­na­tions of the num­ber­ing sys­tems, if you care to know why we have so many.

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A New Edition of Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto in G Minor, RV 495

I’m very excit­ed today to release some­thing to the world on which I’ve spent a great deal of time: a new per­form­ing edi­tion of Anto­nio Vivaldi’s Con­cer­to in G minor for bas­soon, strings, and bas­so con­tin­uo (RV 495), pre­pared using a copy of Vivaldi’s own man­u­script. You can down­load the whole thing (for free!) at the end of this post. But first I’d like to talk a bit about my path to the piece and my meth­ods in cre­at­ing this edi­tion. I hope that this will all prove use­ful to some­one out there, par­tic­u­lar­ly since this is one of the required pieces for the 2014 Meg Quigley Vival­di Com­pe­ti­tion.

Vivaldi Autograph

I’ve played a cou­ple of Vivaldi’s oth­er con­cer­ti in the past. But my rela­tion­ship with this piece began last year, after Nad­i­na Mack­ie Jack­son did me the hon­or of ask­ing me to write the lin­er notes for the first disc in what will even­tu­al­ly be a set of all the Vival­di bas­soon con­cer­ti. I dove into the project with my cus­tom­ary gus­to — books lit­tered my desk and floor, and PDFs of mis­cel­la­neous Vival­diana deliv­ered to me by the wiz­ards of Inter­li­brary Loan sim­i­lar­ly clut­tered my lap­top screen. As far as I’m con­cerned, research is the fun part. If I could just keep find­ing and absorb­ing more sources with­out ever hav­ing to actu­al­ly write any­thing, I’d be that much hap­pi­er. But aside from the var­i­ous print mate­ri­als, I had a more-or-less con­stant Vival­di bas­soon con­cer­to sound­track — most­ly pre-release mix­es of Nad­i­na’s record­ing, but also ver­sions by Michael McCraw, Ser­gio Azzoli­ni, Mau­rice Allard, and others.

By the time I had fin­ished the notes for Nad­i­na, I was thor­ough­ly fired-up about Vival­di and his 37 bas­soon con­cer­ti (plus two incom­plete works). So much so, in fact, that I asked Lor­na Peters, Sacra­men­to State’s won­der­ful harp­si­chord (and piano) teacher, if she’d con­sid­er pro­gram­ming one of them with Cam­er­a­ta Capis­tra­no, the school’s Baroque ensem­ble. Hap­pi­ly for me, she agreed, and I set about pick­ing a piece. It’s prob­a­bly not sur­pris­ing that I chose one of the con­cer­ti from Nad­i­na’s disc (RV 495), with which I’d been singing along for weeks. There are many things I love about this con­cer­to. The first move­ment is fiery and flashy. The sec­ond move­ment fore­gos the upper strings entire­ly, cre­at­ing a beau­ti­ful and pas­sion­ate dia­log between soloist and con­tin­uo. The third move­ment is just all-out inten­si­ty — it starts with the whole ensem­ble in dri­ving uni­son (almost the Baroque equiv­a­lent of pow­er chords), and con­tains what I think is one of the best licks ever writ­ten for bas­soon (mm. 53–56).

I first per­formed the piece with Cam­er­a­ta Capis­tra­no in Feb­ru­ary of this year, and luck­i­ly we’ve had many chances to present it again since then. Our tenth per­for­mance will come this Sun­day, as part of the Bra­vo Bach Fes­ti­val in Sacra­men­to. This is the first time I’ve per­formed a sin­gle solo work so often, and I’ve found it to be an incred­i­bly instruc­tive and free­ing expe­ri­ence. The abil­i­ty to actu­al­ly take chances and try new things over the course of mul­ti­ple per­for­mances can shape your per­cep­tion of and rela­tion­ship to a piece in ways that are dif­fi­cult — if not impos­si­ble — to recre­ate in the prac­tice room or in a stand-alone per­for­mance. Even though I fin­ished school a num­ber of years ago, the one-and-done degree recital men­tal­i­ty is some­thing I’m still try­ing to shake. But that’s a top­ic for anoth­er post.

As soon as I’d set­tled on this con­cer­to, I knew that I want­ed to cre­ate my own per­form­ing edi­tion. At the time, I could­n’t locate an edi­tion with string parts (I’ve since found one, avail­able only from Ger­many). Plus, what bet­ter way to learn a piece back­wards and for­wards than to study the man­u­script and make up a new score and set of parts? I could eas­i­ly have used as my source the score pub­lished in 1957 as part of Ricordi’s Com­plete Works edi­tion. But the edi­tor, Gian Francesco Malip­iero, pro­vid­ed no crit­i­cal com­men­tary and appears to have made some edi­to­r­i­al deci­sions with­out explic­it­ly indi­cat­ing that he’d done so. So instead, I went right to Vivaldi’s own manuscript.

Vivaldi's shorthand for whole-ensemble unison writing

Vivaldi’s short­hand for whole-ensem­ble uni­son writing

Vivaldi’s bas­soon con­cer­ti (and indeed most of his works) were not pub­lished in his own life­time, and are only known to us through a mas­sive col­lec­tion of man­u­script scores that now resides at the Bib­liote­ca Nazionale in Turin, Italy. Most of these are in the com­poser’s own hand, and the col­lec­tion con­tains many incom­plete sketch­es and drafts. These are strong indi­ca­tions that the col­lec­tion was Vivaldi’s own com­pendi­um of his works, and as such, the scores are far from per­for­mance-ready. The com­pos­er made exten­sive use of short­hand tech­niques, includ­ing dal seg­ni that would be awk­ward in per­for­mance and sim­ply indi­cat­ing uni­son parts instead of writ­ing out the same music on mul­ti­ple lines (see the exam­ple at right).

Beyond expand­ing this short­hand, I endeav­ored to keep my edi­to­r­i­al hand as light as pos­si­ble. But inevitably, there were a few instances in which I made changes or inter­pre­tive deci­sions. I have detailed these in a crit­i­cal report with­in the score. I have not added any artic­u­la­tions, dynam­ics, orna­ments, or any oth­er per­for­mance sug­ges­tions; these are total­ly “clean” parts. There are, how­ev­er, a few impor­tant ways in which this edi­tion dif­fers from the Ricor­di edi­tion (and oth­er edi­tions that have used Ricor­di as their source):

  • Through­out the con­cer­to, Vival­di indi­cates that the soloist should join the con­tin­uo line dur­ing tut­ti sec­tions. Except for the few pas­sages in which Vival­di did not make such an indi­ca­tion, I have pro­vid­ed the soloist with the bass line in small nota­tion. The Ricor­di score leaves rests for the bas­soon in all of these passages.
  • Mea­sures 211–214 of the Presto are in D minor in Vivaldi’s man­u­script. In mea­sure 211 it appears that he has writ­ten and then wiped away or scratched out a sharp sym­bol on an F in the Vio­la part, but there are no oth­er F‑sharps marked in those mea­sures. There is then a sud­den change to D major in mea­sure 215. The Ricor­di score places the whole pas­sage in D major.
  • Mea­sure 260 of the Presto does not exist in the Ricor­di edi­tion. This comes at the end of the last solo sec­tion, and the final ritor­nel­lo is a repeat of mea­sures 23–55. In Vivaldi’s man­u­script, he wrote out a full mea­sure of res­o­lu­tion (my bar 260), and then indi­cat­ed a dal seg­no to mea­sure 23. Ricor­di omit­ted this mea­sure, and instead elid­ed the last solo cadence with the begin­ning of the final ritornello.
  • Vival­di wrote artic­u­la­tion marks over the eighth notes in the solo part in mea­sures 249–252 and 258–259. The Ricor­di edi­tion ren­ders all of these marks as stac­cati. But in Vivaldi’s hand, the marks in mea­sures 258–259 are clear­ly longer than those in 249–252 (see below). Thus, I have marked the eighth notes in 249–252 as stac­ca­to and those in 258–259 with wedges.
Two types of Vivaldi's articulation marks

Two types of Vivaldi’s artic­u­la­tion marks

For the actu­al engrav­ing of the score and parts, I used Lily­Pond, which I also used for my fin­ger­ing charts. It can be kind of a has­sle but pro­duces very ele­gant results. Also like my fin­ger­ing charts, I’m releas­ing this under a Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion-Non­Com­mer­cial-Share­Alike license. Basi­cal­ly, it means you can use, alter, copy, or dis­trib­ute this how­ev­er you’d like, so long as you give me cred­it and don’t sell it.

It is impor­tant to note that this edi­tion does not include a key­board reduc­tion. It is suit­able only for study or for per­for­mance with string play­ers and a com­pe­tent harp­si­chordist. If you need a ful­ly writ­ten-out key­board part, I would rec­om­mend the new bassoon/piano edi­tion pub­lished by TrevCo Music Pub­lish­ing (they list it under its Fan­na num­ber: F8#23).

And now, with­out fur­ther ado, here it is:

Complete Score and Parts (ZIP)

Vival­di RV 495 — Com­plete Set

Individual Files (PDFs)

Vival­di RV 495 — Bassoon
Vival­di RV 495 — Vio­lin 1
Vival­di RV 495 — Vio­lin 2
Vival­di RV 495 — Viola
Vival­di RV 495 — Bas­so Continuo
Vival­di RV 495 — Bas­so Con­tin­uo (alter­nate ver­sion with the sec­ond move­ment in score)
Vival­di RV 495 — Score

Although I’ve gone over all of this with a num­ber of fine-tooth combs, I’d wel­come any cor­rec­tions, com­ments, or oth­er feedback.

Fingering Charts

Update (6/25/2014): Find the lat­est ver­sion of my fin­ger­ing charts here: https://davidawells.com/resources/fingering-charts/

E-flat fingering

My favorite fin­ger­ing. No, really…

A cou­ple of weeks ago, I start­ed teach­ing a high school vio­list who decid­ed that she’d like to play the bas­soon. Not know­ing if she’d got­ten her hands on a fin­ger­ing chart or not, I decid­ed to take one to her les­son. I have quite a few charts lying around, but as I looked through them, I real­ized that I did­n’t com­plete­ly agree with any of them, at least not for use by a begin­ning stu­dent. I end­ed up tak­ing her a copy of a chart that I’d got­ten from the Conn-Selmer web site, but only after I’d marked it all up with a pen. It turned out that she did have a fin­ger­ing chart already, but I did­n’t com­plete­ly agree with it, either. As I was dri­ving home from her first les­son, I thought to myself how sil­ly it is to give a stu­dent a fin­ger­ing chart that I’ve marked all over, espe­cial­ly since this cer­tain­ly isn’t the first time I’ve done so. I resolved then and there that I’d make my own fin­ger­ing chart.

Awhile ago, I’d come across the very cool and well-thought-out Fin­ger­ing Dia­gram Builder built by Bret Pimentel, mul­ti­ple-wood­winds teacher at Delta State Uni­ver­si­ty. (You can read more about the FDB here). But until now, I had­n’t done any more than just play around with it. I used Bret’s FDB to crank out an image for each of my basic fin­ger­ings. I includ­ed my most com­mon alter­nate fin­ger­ings, but did­n’t get into slur, mut­ed, trill, or oth­er variations.

Once I had all of the images, I had to decide how best to lay them out with­in a score. I’ve been using Finale for years, but I’d recent­ly start­ed play­ing around with Lily­Pond. Lily­Pond is an open-source music engrav­ing pro­gram that pro­duces very nice-look­ing scores — far clos­er in appear­ance to good old-fash­ioned hand engrav­ing than Finale’s often jagged and weird­ly-spaced out­put. The down­side (if you choose to see it that way) is that Lily­Pond has no graph­i­cal user inter­face; it gen­er­ates scores from spe­cial­ly for­mat­ted text files, and is in that way more like a pro­gram­ming lan­guage than a tra­di­tion­al nota­tion pro­gram. But, I’d been look­ing for a project to under­take with Lily­Pond, and this seemed like just the thing.

It took awhile to get the hang of Lily­Pond, and some for­mat­ting things I only ever got by tri­al and error. But, I final­ly end­ed up with two ver­sions of my per­son­al fin­ger­ing chart. The first is the one I’ll hand stu­dents. It cov­ers the more-or-less stan­dard range of the bas­soon (Bb1 — E5), uses only bass and tenor clefs, and includes a dia­gram with key names. The sec­ond, which I’ve dubbed my “Pro” chart, dis­cards the key dia­gram and switch­es to tre­ble clef at the top end. Oh, it also goes up to Bb5 (although I don’t yet have a reli­able fin­ger­ing for A5 — anybody?).

Since Bret has made the dia­grams gen­er­at­ed by his FDB avail­able under a Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion-Non­Com­mer­cial-Share­Alike 3.0 Unport­ed (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license, I’ve done the same with my charts. Please, take a look and let me know what you think. Is there any­thing I could do to make them eas­i­er to read, eas­i­er to use, or just plain look nicer? Or do you spot any fin­ger­ings that I’ve ren­dered incorrectly?