Alto, Mixed choir (SATB),
Piano
SKU:
BA.BA11309
Composed
by Camille Saint-Saens.
Edited by Christina M.
Stahl. This edition:
urtext edition.
Paperback. Score.
Baerenreiter Verlag
#BA11309. Published by
Baerenreiter Verlag
(BA.BA11309).
ISBN
9790006577705. 27 x 19 cm
inches. Text Language:
English.
It is a
small music history
sensation: Thanks to Yves
Grard an unknown and
unpublished manuscript
penned by Camille
Saint-Saëns has been
unearthed in the
Mdiathèque Jean Renoir
in Dieppe in
France.
It is the
top four instrumental
parts which make this
manuscript something of a
sensation. Placed under
each other are
â??Saxophone Soprano en
Si bâ?, â??Saxophone
Alto en Mi bâ?,
â??Saxophone Tnor en Si
bâ? and â??Saxophone
Baryton en Mi bâ?,
strings, soprano solo
with chorus and organ.
Musical history has
hitherto credited
Jean-Baptiste Singele
(1812â??1875) with
having written the first
saxophone quartet, his
opus 53, which he
completed in 1857. Now
this historiography
clearly has to be
revised. The date 1854
has been found under the
first page of the
treasure from Dieppe,
which is pasted over and
also sewn, meaning that
Saint-Saënsâ?? work
was written three years
earlier than that of
Singele.
In
contrast to Singele,
Saint-Saëns does not
have the wind instruments
taking solo parts but
rather uses their tonal
colour to depict textual
moods and nuances. On the
one hand the saxophones
accompany the choral
parts (certainly singable
by amateurs) and support
the human voices in fugal
passages. On the other
hand, they take the
melody in the purely
orchestral
passages.
Saint-Sa
ëns wrote the motet in
the period when he had
taken up his first
permanent appointment as
organist at the Church of
Saint-Merri in Paris. He
revised the work several
times over the decades,
changing the motifs at
the beginning, correcting
obvious mistakes,
reworking the ending,
eventually changing the
instrumentation several
times and even â??
probably in the final
stage â?? replacing the
Latin text with an
English one. Today,
three-and-a-half versions
have been handed down,
one of them stopping
after just a few pages.
The compositional steps
have been successfully
reconstructed by means of
detailed detective work.
Furthermore, the first
saxophone version (BA
11305) and the last
English piano version (BA
11309) have been edited
to produce a
scholarly-critical
edition.
The
present edition of the
English version for
soprano solo, choir and
piano (BA 11309) serves
both as a full score and
as a vocal score due to
the
instrumentation.
About
Barenreiter
Urtext
What can I
expect from a Barenreiter
Urtext
edition?<
/p>
MUSICOLOGICA
LLY SOUND
- A
reliable musical text
based on all available
sources
- A
description of the
sources
-
Information on the
genesis and history of
the work
- Valuable
notes on performance
practice
- Includes
an introduction with
critical commentary
explaining source
discrepancies and
editorial decisions
... AND
PRACTICAL
-
Page-turns, fold-out
pages, and cues where you
need them
- A
well-presented layout and
a user-friendly
format
- Excellent
print quality
-
Superior paper and
binding
By the Rivers of Babylon
