Bach toccatas

Dorico
1

Has anyone worked on the Bach toccatas for keyboard, or knows of a good digital edition?
I ask because I could not find one, nowadays I play almost everything from iPad, so I am replacing my paper library to digital. For the Toccatas I have not found a nice PDF edition which compares to the Henle which I have in paper (but with lots of pencil scribbling, so not feasable to xerox). The only versions I could find are some kind of copy from another edition (I think Peters), and they look much less. So I tried to make it myself, but boy what a work!

Capture1
Capture1718Ă—353 37.1 KB

This is the straight version, but I like this one much better:
Capture2
Capture2721Ă—352 37.3 KB

But that amounts to an enormous lot of work: stems are lengthed (or shortened), notes and rests are individually moved horizontally (for rests this is only possible with a workaround), rests also vertically, a lots of rests removed etc etc. Now did it for one system to get the hang of it, but there are many more systems and pages to come!
Maybe it is even faster to write it down with pen & paper :smiley:

2 Likes
2

The 1960-70ies Bärenreiter edition seems to be on IMSLP

https://imslp.org/wiki/Neue_Bach-Ausgabe_(Bach,_Johann_Sebastian)

The organ works have been re-edited since then and expanded, BA5279;
https://www.baerenreiter.com/en/shop/product/details/BA5279/

3

Je gaat me toch niet vertellen dat je dit op het carillon gaat spelen… :open_mouth:

4

These are the organ toccatas, I meant the harpsichord ones BWV 910-916, they are not there in a decent version!

5

Haha nee hoor, van oorsprong ben ik klavecinist/organist. Beiaard heb ik zojuist (als late roeping) afgesloten. Denk niet dat ik deze ga bewerken…

6

Why don’t you use the Henle app and purchase? You can create fresh annotations on it :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes
7

I do not want to use different apps for performing, since I already have build a huge library in forScore, so everything must be in that app.
But after a bit of searching I found out that the Henle app permits exporting of the pdf, so I bought the toccatas and have them now in forScore, saved me a huge amount of work :smiley:

1 Like
8

More information here if anyone is interested.
https://www.henle-library.com/en/support/
From time to time they have discounts on purchasing their “credits”, then you spend them on single pieces or albums as you need to.

1 Like
9

Tobias Schölkopf has put a lot of work into this, you might like it, as it’s quite tightly written:
toccata in D.pdf (45.0 KB)

1 Like
10

Yes I know his site and he really has an incredible lot of work in it I imagine! A very valuable resource for MusicXML, actually I got the xml for the toccatas from his site, but unforunately he follows the Peters edition (that is something like the first picture) and it is still a lot of work to change that to the second picture!
But I think I will be very happy with the Henle PDF :smiley:

11

Jeroen, are you Carillon player yourself?
Where can one listen to this outstanding instrument?

12

I had never heard of his site but it appears to be an absolute treasure trove!

13

Yes I am, just last year finished my master (that makes me an old-master :smiley:). Earlier in life I have graduated for organ and harpsichord, and I play a lot of clavichord too, all keyboards!
Well, by nature a carillon is not very mobile! (although there are a few mobile instruments). So you have travel to them. There are around 600 worldwide, most are located in the Netherlands (200 ish), then the US (ca. 160) and Belgium (ca. 100). Outside these countries they are very rare, they are also rare in the US, because that is so big a country. In the Netherlands and Belgium they are everywhere, almost every city has at least one (Amsterdam has no less than 6 by the famous Hemony brothers from the 17th century!, Leuven 5). So depending on where you live you can have easy opportunity or not. A resource to start can be this website http://towerbells.org/ or tell me where you live and I can find out.
But this has not much todo with Dorico I am afraid!

14

this one neither:
I once went into the „Französischer Dom“ in Berlin, Germany - am Gendarmenmarkt: https://maps.app.goo.gl/AWdiEhsSp9og42t57?g_st=ic
While climbing up the inside staircase, someone started to play on a carillon at the top of the building, some modern french (I guess) organ music. The sound was mesmerising - one could almost fall into trance.

15

Yes and it is a great shame. I wish there were more.

16

… this brings us to the question: will G. F. Handel have used Dorico?

ok. it’s really OffTopic:

chop, chop - - -

… will G. F. Handel have borrowed a mobile carillon and placed it outside the church of his first performance of “Saul”?
Or has it been a small indoor instrument?
First performance actually took place at the King’s Theatre in London. So probably the latter choice…

ps.: dear moderator, please feel free to chop this thread off…

17

Well as long as this thread is not chopped of…
French Dom instrument:
https://glockenspieler.de/carillons-in-deutschland/berlin/franzoesischer-dom
there is no regular player there, so you might have heard the automata.
On that website you can find all carillons in Deutschland (Berlin has 4).

The mobile instruments of today are transportable by lorry, so not that small, but they are an invention of last century. There have always been practice instruments, with baton keyboard and little bell-like things, or vibraphone-like metal things or digital (that is what I have).

There are not that many instruments in general, one of the reasons is offcourse costs, they are (and were) extremely expensive thingies :smiley: (BTW and even more so the drums for the automata!)

Well perhaps enough digression!
Back to Dorico etc.

1 Like