# Best Publishers for composers?



## Sofronitsky

Please post your favorite publishers for certain keyboard composers. I'm just now realizing how awful G. Schirmer is and would like to know a good publisher to buy from for Bach and Beethoven specifically, but would DEFINITELY benefit from knowing more.


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## Meaghan

I like Henle. With Bach, a lot of editions will have all kinds of editorial markings for dynamics, articulations, etc. that are _not_ the composer's, and often contradict baroque performance practice. Henle does not do this. They also publish the complete Beethoven sonatas in two volumes. I am very attached to my Henle Beethovens. They come everywhere with me, so they are a bit frayed around the edges, but generally holding up well. And being big softcover books, they stay open easily.

I think urtext editions (like Henle's) are preferable in general, though there's been some debate about their merit with regards to Beethoven especially. Influential piano folks like Schnabel have argued for "normalizing" Beethoven's phrase markings in cases where he writes slurs over a phrase one way at the beginning of a piece and differently when the same phrase crops up later, but it seems to me that when Beethoven does this, there is usually good reason for it, and it is not just him being erratic or absent-minded. Beethoven transforms the character and function of recurring phrases over the course of a sonata movement, and this is accomplished partly by varying the phrase markings. If you're interested, there is a very interesting discussion of this debate in Charles Rosen's _Beethoven's Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion_.


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## Sofronitsky

Meaghan said:


> I like Henle. With Bach, a lot of editions will have all kinds of editorial markings for dynamics, articulations, etc. that are _not_ the composer's, and often contradict baroque performance practice. Henle does not do this. They also publish the complete Beethoven sonatas in two volumes. I am very attached to my Henle Beethovens. They come everywhere with me, so they are a bit frayed around the edges, but generally holding up well. And being big softcover books, they stay open easily.
> 
> I think urtext editions (like Henle's) are preferable in general, though there's been some debate about their merit with regards to Beethoven especially. Influential piano folks like Schnabel have argued for "normalizing" Beethoven's phrase markings in cases where he writes slurs over a phrase one way at the beginning of a piece and differently when the same phrase crops up later, but it seems to me that when Beethoven does this, there is usually good reason for it, and it is not just him being erratic or absent-minded. Beethoven transforms the character and function of recurring phrases over the course of a sonata movement, and this is accomplished partly by varying the phrase markings. If you're interested, there is a very interesting discussion of this debate in Charles Rosen's _Beethoven's Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion_.


Thank you. I was hoping there would be a second opinion to Henle, but I think now it's clear I can't escape the price. I'll be playing the Beethoven Sonatas and the Bach Partitas/Fugues for the rest of my life probably, might as well buy the best.


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## Rasa

Henle. 

Henle.

It's the clearest print, with the least bs.


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## Il_Penseroso

Urtext is excellent. That Old Peters (London) is also good. Dover (NY) mostly for Orchestral and Opera Scores.


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## Sofronitsky

I think I would gladly trade in all 25 of my g schrimer scores for 3 Henle Urtext ones.

Lucky for me, this is about the price difference!


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## Air

I like Henle Verlag and Edition Peters the best - there's something about the reliability of Urtext editions that makes playing pieces much more comfortable. For contemporary music and Russian composers like Prokofiev and Rachmaninov, Boosey & Hawkes is really good too, especially since Henle and Peters are a bit lacking in this repertoire.

If competitions are important to you, here is one thing I've learned - never show up to a competition with a non-Urtext book or sheet music copy. My teacher from Uzbekistan used to send her students everywhere with Soviet versions, which she had owned in bulk before moving to the United States, and the judges would dock off points simply for that. It soon got to the point that she dumped out almost all of her Russian books and replaced them with just a few, but quite valuable, Urtext editions.

Unfortunately, there's nothing stronger physically about Urtext editions in general. For example, my WTC Book 1 is beginning to tear down the middle from overuse - and the cover just fell off last week.


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