The Bells in Full Score Review

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(More customer reviews)Once I got past the defects of my 1st copy (which had to thus be exchanged), there is no question of this being another gem to add to Dover's collection of fine reprinted 1st-edition scores, with this one to boot having the bonus of having apparently-decent singing-translations in German and English in addition to the original Russian version by Konstántin Bálmont which Sjergjéy Vasíljevich Rakhmáñinov set.[The very fact that the English version used in the score is NOT the original Poe poem-set can indicate just how virtually untranslateable poetry usually happens to be (hence one book trying to do that writing of such attempts as 'a study in failure')!!]The only regret from this non-Italianophile writer is that the the instrumental nomenclature is in Italian (unlike the same original publisher's "Ostróva Mjórtvïkh" {Isle of the Dead}, Op.29, which was basically done in German);however, that's inconsequential.[Another thing that might have been of help could have been to print the two scores in one volume;furthermore, the original publisher Gutheil often lets blank staves fill up pages and systems where perhaps they could have profitably been omitted - but that's not Dover's fault at all...]Otherwise, bravo Dover!!!!

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Product Description:
This great choral symphony by the last of Russia's Romantic composers was written in 1913 and is reputed to be among Rachmaninoff's favorites of all his works. Scored for a large orchestra, solo vocalists, and chorus, the work is loosely based on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe. The Bells exhibits an emotional intensity unsurpassed in Rachmaninoff's later works.

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Carmina Burana: Vocal Score (Schott) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book has the full vocal score, well-printed, well laid-out.If you're doing Carmina, you want this score!Clear type, adequate size, good binding, and you can see what the other parts are doing, which really helps most choral singers.

Expensive, but worth it.Particularly if you're going to do Carmina maybe 5-10 times in your career.

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Piano reduction of the score with vocal parts.

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Carmina Burana (Schott) Review

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(More customer reviews)Carmina Burana has become one of the favorite compositions of the 20th century, Carl Orff's setting of the profane medieval Goliard poems has been performed countless times and the opening movement is recognizable by nearly everybody.

Judith Lynn Sebesta has written a book about the text and Orff's music, while some reviewers seem to think the book is intended for adolescents, the complexities of the questions and the illustrations suggest otherwise.

The information in the book is useful.After an overview of the Goliards and the history of the text, Sebesta breaks the Latin text up into segments.Within these segments are the Latin text with definitions, a poetic English translation, and analysis of the text and Orff's setting of the music.The final section contains an alternate English translation.

There are several great things about this book.First, there's nothing else like this out there right now, so it remains a good source.Sebesta is effective at analyzing the text and areas of special interest.The illustrations are also interesting additions, and the Latin definitions can be helpful.For these reasons, this book is recommended to anyone performing CB.

This book is far from perfect.Sebesta asks direct questions of the reader about the relationship between text and music.While this engages the reader's thought, Sebesta provides few answers, making the book less of a resource.

In addition, the book seems to have a fragmented structure.One has little idea what to expect when one turns to the next page.Moreover, the musical analysis is quite lacking.

Despite its shortcomings, this seems to be the best book out there on the subject.Hopefully there will be a Cambridge Music Handbook or a similar publication regarding CB which will be of the quality which it deserves.

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Product Description:
Carmina Burana, first performed in 1937, is based on an important collection of thirteenth-century poems found in the monastery of Benediktbeuren. Carl Orff made selections from this collection and in robust and delicate musical colors painted a manifold picture of life. "Everything I have written up to now, and which you have unfortunately printed, you can shred into pulp. My collected works begin with 'Carmina Burana'." Carl Orff wrote to his publisher after the premiere. And so it was that his work caused a sensation in the whole world and continues to delight people of all cultures. The 'Carmina Burana' is written for solo singers, chorus and orchestra.

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Christmas Oratorio in Full Score Review

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(More customer reviews)Dover Publications full scores are a boon for music student and others on a budget: Being reprints of old editions free of copyright, they represent the very best value-for-money on the market, even though the newest Urtext scholarship may not be present in them. Most of them are very readable, and indeed holds a high enough quality for anyone.

This publication, however, has a few problems. First of all, the print quality of Dover scores seems to be variable, and this is one of the worse ones. While the note heads themselves are very large and visible, the stems are often halfway removed (in general, the paper quality isn't as good as in most of my other Dover scores, a major point for those of us who like to make notes in our scores). In this music, you can probably predict a note value with reasonable accuracy, but it's still a bit annoying. This edition is a copy of a print from 1856 (just a couple of decades after Mendelssohns famed "rediscovery" of Bach), which not only is very old even for a Dover score, but it also means that quite a few old fashioned idioms are present. First of all, C clefs are used by soprano, alto and tenor, which may pose a problem for some. Another thing entirely is the fact that the edition was printed a century before the period style movement gained any hold, which means that the instrumentation as given in this edition is what would be used in a 19th century performance of the oratorio. Although they have been faithfull when it comes to using archaic oboes (oboe d'amore and oboe d'caccia). The trumpets are, however, assigned to then modern instruments.

The worst part about this score, however, is the fact that while instrumentation varies for each movement, the names of each instrument playing is only mentioned at the beginning of each movement; you'll have to remember for yourself after that. To make matters worse, no bar numbers are added. These kinds of things annoy me quite a bit, as it would have been a very small job for Dover to fix these points, and it would make these scores a lot more practical.

Still, it is a score of an amazing piece of music, it's cheap, and I've yet to find any errors in the music itself. So I would definitely recommend it, but there is at the same time room for improvement.

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Product Description:
First produced in Leipzig in 1734-35, Bach's Christmas Oratorio unfolds in a set of six cantatas unified by a Biblical narrative relating the story of the birth of Christ. This masterpiece of sacred music, for centuries a favorite of concert audiences and church congregations throughout the Christmas season, has been reproduced directly from the authoritative Bach-Gesellschaft edition published by Breitkopf & Härtel of Leipzig.

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Messiah Review

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(More customer reviews)After many readings and performances from other editions, the Watkins Shawedition stands out as being the most authoritative and being the closest tothe original score with most, if not all, of Handel's original markings. Having studied both Schirmer and Oxford editions, this edition has the mostto offer the true musical purist, especially from an accompanimentalstandpoint.The six page preface is extremely helpful in pinpointingperformance notes to exacting ornamentation to accurate rhythmicinterpretations.A must have for your choral music library!

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Product Description:
A sacred oratorio arranged for SATB with piano part. Edited, with piano reduction, by Watkins Shaw. Paper Edition

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