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Article Excerpt
Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Mozart's Haffner and Linz Symphonies Arranged for Pianoforte, Flute, Violin, and Violoncello. Edited by Mark Kroll. (Recent Researches in the Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, 29.) Madison, WI: A-R Editions, Inc., c2000. [Acknowledgments, p. vi; introd., p. vii-xvi; 2 plates; scores, 114 p.; crit. report, p. 115-17. ISBN 0-89579-466-7. $55; parts (fl., vln., vc.), $27.]
Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Twelve Select Overtures Arranged for Pianoforte, Flute, Violin, and Violoncello. Edited by Mark Kroll. (Recent Researches in the Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, 35.) Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, Inc., c2003. [Acknowledgments, p. vi; introd., p. vii-xii; 2 plates; scores, 285 p.; crit. report, p. 287-89. ISBN 0-89579-519-1. $160; parts (fl., vln., vc.), $54.] Contains overtures to Prometheus (Beethoven), Die Zauberflote (Mozart), Lodoiska (Cherubini), Figaro (Mozart), Iphigenia [en Aulide] (Gluck), Sargino (Ferdinando Paer), Der Freischutz (Weber), Euryanthe (Weber), Tancredi (Rossini), and Anacreon (Cherubini), plus Original Overture (Friedrich Heinrich Himmel) and [Original] Overture (Andreas Jakob Romberg).
On the face of it, a critical edition of an "inauthentic" version of a musical work, and of an arrangement no less, would seem to be a misdirection of scholarly effort, particularly when the work in question is very familiar and readily available, both in print and in recorded performances, in its "authentic" form. But there are many valid reasons for taking such arrangements and inauthentic editions seriously, and we can therefore extend a warm welcome to these two volumes edited by Mark Kroll in Recent Researches in the Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries that present Johann Nepomuk Hummel's arrangements of two Mozart symphonies (from Mozart's Six Grand Symphonies [London: Chappell & Co., 1823-24]) and a dozen overtures by various composers that comprised his first set of Twelve Select Overtures (London: Boosey, 1821).
As Kroll details in his valuable introduction to the...
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