Re: Bach, beams, and benchmarks

[Lukas-Fabian Moser]

Yes, thanks.  I should mention that "copying this from another source"
is a bad idea _unless_ you are creating an Urtext since things like the
fingering are copyrighted (except for quite old editions).  This may be
particularly infuriating concerning the Bach solo string pieces since

a) the more complex passages have only one feasible and obvious
fingering: they are written for violin/cello rather than against them.

b) cluttering the score with pre-printed fingering is more annoying than
helpful anyway, particularly so where a "creative element" is
indisputible since the editor has diverged from the obvious best choice.

In general it tends to be a better idea for legal reasons to copy Urtext
editions: their claim to copyright is actually constrained to the
graphical elements rather than the musical content.  But I found that
extensively "helpful" editions particularly of the solo suites/sonatas
are not actually helpful for performance preparation since they are a
distraction and impede with the player's "breathing room".

I think there a some questionable presuppositions in your reasoning (while you're obviously right regarding the legal aspects, and I also tend to agree that it's nice to have the "breathing room" an edition without printed fingerings leaves the player).

Especially, I'd challenge the term "obvious best choice". Even if you do not abuse the instrument (and the work) and try, for example, to play the D major cello suite on a four-stringend instrument (which is not what Bach intended, but is possible - albeit quite hard - and in any case absolutely common), there are many reasons why there might be more than one possible and sensible fingering for a given passage, no matter if it's "more complex" or not.

Hands and tastes differ, and so does the degree by which the player of "old" music is willing to adopt historical fingering styles that generally faded into oblivion in the course of centuries. On the cello (which is the only instrument I can account for), aspects of fingering style that changed over time include

- the attitude towards using open strings,
- the preferred positions to be used when leaving 1s position,
- the fingers to be used when changing position (this is an especially personal matter - I, for one, very often play semitones with the same finger even if it is 4-4, a practice some colleagues frown at),
- in later pieces (from Haydn on), the extent to which the thumb is used,
- if using the thumb, the extent to which the 4th finger is used at the same time (something that can be observed in many practical editions from early 20th century, but has become quite much out of fashion since),
- the question whether to use the 4th finger in higher positions (5-7) where the thumb is not involved (it's a quite recent development seen in young master cellists that they routinely do use the 4th finger here, contrary to everything that is explained in traditional textbooks)

and so on.

For instance, in Abraham's edition, bar 20 starts with 1-2-2. A valid choice (which is also in Wenzinger's standard edition), but one I would never use, preferring 1-2-1 to avoid the awkward arm movement involved in preparing a clean Barré. Now this is hardly a "more complex passage" ... but I'm not quite sure how to define that term, anyway. (Except for a funny circular and self-contradictory definition: "A more complex passage is one where you need a fingering to survive, and in these, the fingering is obvious since the piece is written for the instrument instead of against it." ;-) )

Lukas