According to theZHdK , Vojin Kocic studied with Darko Karajic and Srdjan Tosic in Belgrade and with Oscar Ghiglia in Siena. At the Accademia Chigiana there, he is the only person to date to have been awarded the "Diploma d'Onore". At the ZHdK, he completed his Master's degree in Specialized Music Performance and Music Pedagogy with Anders Miolin.

He has won several prizes at prestigious international competitions and gives concerts throughout Europe, both as a soloist and as a soloist with renowned orchestras.
 

From current performance and media art to opera, dance theater and musicals to music videos and film music - in six semesters, students not only acquire fundamental knowledge of music history from antiquity to the present, but also broad specialist knowledge and comprehensive methodological skills in dealing with music and theater.

In addition, they experience practical experience at first hand: through cooperation with the opera school of the HfM and the Detmold State Theatre, the students take a direct look behind the scenes and accompany productions both academically and dramaturgically.

Interested students can still apply for the course, which starts in the summer semester of 2022, until March 21.

More info:
www.uni-paderborn.de/studienangebot/studiengang/musikwissenschaft-bachelor.

Alongside Johann Carl Eschmann, Theodor Fröhlich, Hans Huber and Joachim Raff, Paul Juon (1872-1940) has been one of the most interesting rediscoveries and reappraisals of Swiss Romantics since the 1980s. The peer of Alexander Scriabin and grandson of a confectioner who emigrated from the Grisons to Russia occupies a special position, and not just because of his biography.

Born in Moscow and taught there at the conservatory by Jan Hřímalý (violin), Anton Arensky and Sergei Taneyev (composition), Juon spent most of his life in Russia and Germany before moving to Lake Geneva in 1934. He continued his composition studies with Woldemar Bargiel at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, where he himself trained composers such as Philipp Jarnach, Heinrich Kaminski, Nikos Skalkottas, Pantscho Wladigerow and Stefan Wolpe. He was awarded the Mendelssohn Prize in 1896, became a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1919 and was awarded the Beethoven Prize in 1929. He also made a name for himself with music theory manuals and as a translator.

Although he was more influenced by Tchaikovsky than by Brahms, he went down in music history as the "Russian Brahms" together with Alexander Glazunov, Nikolai Medtner and Sergei Taneyev. The term "Swiss Tchaikovsky" would have been more appropriate.

His work, which was also influenced by Nordic music - Juon revised several works by Jean Sibelius - begins with music in the style of late Russian national romanticism and leads into the modern era with harmonic and rhythmic experiments as well as metric series. The latter, first applied in 1903, point to the "variable meters" developed by Boris Blacher around 1950. Following the principle of Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor, Juon created single-movement compositions consisting of several movement-like parts.

Among the 99 compositions with opus numbers, two symphonies, three violin concertos, five piano trios, four string quartets, several sonatas and much piano music stand out.
The International Juon Society IJG, founded in Zurich in 1998 at the suggestion of the Grisons Juon biographer Thomas Badrutt, began an orchestral edition ten years ago. To mark the composer's 150th birthday on March 8, it is now completing the preparation of all eight unpublished orchestral works. These include the Symphony No. 1 in F sharp minor op. 10 (1895), a major work that is characterized by its typically Russian colouring. The Swiss conductor Christof Escher has recorded it together with the 2nd Symphony, the Fantasie Vaegtervise and the Suite op. 93 in Lugano and Moscow and released as CD recordings by Sterling (Sterling 1103-2: Fantasy, Symphony No. 2; Sterling 1104-2: Suite, Symphony No. 1).

The school musician Ueli Falett, president of the IJG since 2012, passionate violist and director of orchestra weeks, worked closely with Escher on the edition. Escher rounded off the painstaking work of editing on the basis of orchestral parts and the production of performance material using autograph scores with prefaces written by himself.

In addition to smaller pieces, the following works are now available in score and parts: Ballet suite from the dance poem "Psyche" op. 32a, Symphonic sketches "From a diary" op. 35, Dance caprices op. 96, Theme with variations o. op., Three symphonic sketches o. op. They are all located in the Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire Lausanne (BCU), whereby only the scores can be freely accessed and downloaded: https://patrinum.ch/search?cc=AM-Fonds+Paul+Juon&ln=fr&c=AM-Fonds+Paul+Juon

The votes can be ordered until the end of 2022 via: ufalett@juon.org

Sandra Tinner was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds and grew up mainly in German-speaking Switzerland. She is a trained Romance philologist and has a doctorate in neurolinguistics on bilingual brains from the University of Zurich. She worked for many years at universities, mainly in the training of future French teachers. Amateur music has accompanied her since childhood.

She discovered a rarely played instrument, the mandolin, by chance. She rehearses weekly with the mandolin or mandola in plucked string orchestras, is a co-founder of the Swiss plucked string orchestra zupf.helvetica and also cultivates her passion for early music with her baroque mandolin. She has been president of the Swiss Plucked Music Association since 2020. Multilingual networking in Switzerland and beyond is very important to her.

The visualizations in the digital Lexicon of moods by Hans Eugen Frischknecht and Jakob Schmid make the "major triad suitability" of scales with 12 notes per octave apparent at a glance, and at the same time make it audible. This special presentation will be discussed below using three selected examples and compared with other ways of visualizing musical scales. This is followed by a few rather unsystematic considerations on the further development of interactive applications for tone systems and tunings.

The diagrams in the lexicon are calculated from the cent deviations from the equal-tempered chromatic scale in 12 semitones (12-EDO = Equal Division of the Octave), which is called the equal-tempered (chromatic) scale in this essay. Different tunings can be compared with each other using cents. The cent scale for pitches and intervals is based on the division of the octave into 1200 equal micro-intervals. The semitones of the equal-tempered chromatic scale therefore measure 100 cents, the major thirds 400 cents and the fifths 700 cents. The major triad in the home position and closest position therefore has the cent values [0 | 400 | 700] if the fundamental is given the value 0 - generally [x | x + 400 | x + 700] if x is the cent value of the chord fundamental in relation to the reference tone c (or a). In contrast, the tuned major triad (rounded to the nearest cent) has the values [0 | 386 | 702] and is in the frequency proportion 4 : 5 : 6. Chords of tones with simple fundamental frequency proportions are perceived as largely fluctuation-free and consonant if the tones involved each have a harmonic overtone spectrum. The figures show that the deviations of the equal-tempered values from the pure values are only 2 cent units for the fifth and 14 cent units for the major third. The different effect of the two triads is mainly due to the different sized thirds and the timbre.

Can the structural principles of a scale be reconstructed from the visualized numerical material? This is not self-evident. As long as the focus is primarily on major triads and their enharmonic equivalents in scales with twelve notes per octave, the representation can be used universally, but at the same time it reduces pitch systems that are conceived in two and higher dimensions to a single dimension.

Leonhard Euler proposed a chromatic scale derived from a two-dimensional pitch network (Euler 1739, pp. 147, 279). Its reproduction in the Lexicon of moods can be seen in Figure 1 above. The keynote symbols, the twelve small red circles, form three sequences of four, each of which lies on slightly inclined parallel straight sections (if the two Cs at the ends of the diagram are mentally placed together):
f-c-g-d / a-e-b-f-sharp / c-sharp-g-sharp-e-flat-b

The characteristic positive slope (2 cents per fifth) of the straight line sections indicates that the fifths in question are pure. The scale is divided into three groups of four tones, each with three pure fifth steps. These are framed in red in the top diagram in Figure 1 for clarity. The vertical positions of the fundamental tone symbols completely determine the interval structure of a scale (this applies to all scales). The major thirds or fifths also completely determine the scale. The third and fifth symbols therefore also form groups of four on slightly inclined straight line segments in Euler. This redundant representation of the information contained in the 12 semitone or fifth steps allows the major triads to emerge as point configurations in the vertical. And thanks to this redundancy, the harmonic construction principles of a scale are revealed.

Fig. 1: In terms of major triadic purity, the universe of 12-tone scales in the lexicon of tunings has the two poles of Leonhard Euler (top) and the equal-tempered scale (middle). Michael Praetorius' almost mean-tone tuning (bottom) is in the middle and reduces Euler's preference for the major-major relationship in favor of quint-related major scales between B flat major and A major with eight almost harmonic major triads.

Euler's scale contains the maximum possible number of six ideal major triads. Because all three tone symbols coincide at F, C, G as well as A, E and B, there is pure intonation [x | x + 386 | x + 702]. Due to its interval structure, it is possible in this scale to make music in the third-related keys of C major and A major with ideal major triads without exception, and the two third-related scales are a perfect major third apart in the frequency ratio 5/4. The other ten "major keys" all have more or less strongly modified triads. In the emphasized B flat major triad, for example, none of the three constituent intervals correspond to the standard of pure tuning, as all three symbols occupy different vertical positions. Triads related to fifths stand directly next to each other in the diagrams. In Euler's scale, the keys of E flat major and A flat/G sharp major stand out most strongly from C major and A major in their interval structure, as none of the triads drawn have the ideal dot shape (the triads of these two scales are framed in purple in the drawing). Focusing on three neighboring chords in each case also shows that G major and B major (highlighted with blue ellipses) have the same interval structure in Euler because the corresponding symbol patterns are congruent. In these two keys, the fifths of the dominant triads are diminished, but their major thirds are pure. The subdominant and tonic have the ideal form.

The scale shown in the middle of Figure 1 is easier to interpret. Here, all twelve triads have the same deviations from pure intonation, and the three lines of symbols run horizontally. This is the equal temperament, the fifth symbols are just under 2 cents below the fundamental symbols (700-702=-2) and the major thirds 14 cents above (400-386=+14). The fifths are therefore only slightly smaller than pure, but the major thirds are noticeably further than their pure-tuned counterparts. Any difference in meaning between the notes b and a sharp cannot be expressed acoustically in this constellation. While enharmonic reinterpretations in equal temperament do not pose an intonation problem, the selection of twelve notes in a purely syntonic (i.e. quint/terce-based) tuning such as Euler's always involves decisions about preferred enharmonic variants. On closer inspection, the somewhat irritating B-flat major triad in Euler's scale turns out to be a sharp-d-f with a diminished fourth a sharp-d and a Pythagorean third d-f, as the representation of Euler's scale in the fifth-octave grid in figure 2 shows. In this representation, pure fifths are arranged horizontally and pure major thirds vertically, so that the ideal major and minor triads correspond to small right-angled triangles, whereas the unusual "B major triad" consists of corner points of the rectangular grid and is constructed quite differently from thirds and fifths.

Fig. 2: Grid representation of the chromatic scale according to Leonhard Euler (left) and Marin Mersenne (right) The ideal major and minor triads of C major and the chord a sharp-d-f or b flat-d-f, which in Mersenne's work consists of a Pythagorean major third and a perfect fifth, are highlighted.

Grid representations were already in use in the 17th and 18th centuries (Muzzulini 2020, 225). They are not directly suitable for tempered tunings. However, they can also be used to represent syntonic scales with more than 12 notes per octave. From the 14th century onwards, various scales with 17 or more notes per octave were proposed. In scales with 17 notes, the five pairs of notes c sharp-d flat, d sharp- flat, f sharp- flat, g sharp-as and a sharp-b are typically realized with two different pitches (cf. the contributions by Martin Kirnbauer, Rudolph Rasch, Denzil Wright and Patrizio Barbieri in the Yearbook of Musicology 2002). Lattice diagrams - including non-rectangular ones - are widely used in the contemporary theoretical literature on tunings, and with additional information can also be used to illustrate mean-tone and other tunings (Lindley, 1987, Yearbook of Musicology, 2002; Lindley, 1993, p. 28).

Unlike in Euler's solution, in Michael Praetorius' scale (fig. 1 below) it is possible to make music in the keys between B flat major and A major with triads that are all closer to the ideal form than their equal-tempered counterparts - at the expense of the remaining four triads. Modulations between major scales that are close to C major and G major in the circle of fifths therefore do not lead to any significant differences in intonation. On the other hand, all fifth steps, with the exception of G sharp flat, are smaller than pure - and noticeably smaller than in the equal-tempered scale, as the fundamental tone symbols form a line descending to the right. The very large diminished sixth g sharp-e flat, which compensates for the other small fifths, is also known as the wolf fifth. The cent scale on the left-hand edge of the picture shows that Praetorius' "wolf" is about a quarter of a semitone larger than the fifth of equal temperament, as the red connecting line between G sharp and E flat rises by around 25 cents.

Fig. 3: Circular diagrams from the 17th century. Left: Diatonic scale with syntonic comma ("schism", 480 : 486 = 80 : 81). The numbers stand for (suitably scaled) string lengths on the monochord. The octave closes at the "Semitonium majus" (288 (576) | 540 (270)) in the ratio 16/15. The rather imprecisely drawn diagram comes from the oldest surviving copy of the now lost original of René Descartes' "Compendium musicæ", which was made for Isaak Beeckman around 1628 (Descartes (1619, fol. 171r). Right: Marin Mersenne's analysis of a chromatic scale in pure tuning (Mersenne 1636, 132).

As in the Lexicon of moods If only octave-periodic scales are considered, their tones are, strictly speaking, octave classes or pitch classes. Circular representations of the tones are also suitable for this purpose. The representation used by Frischknecht and Schmid shows the C major triad at the left and right ends of the diagram. It would also be conceivable to depict it on a cylindrical shell, which would be created by cutting out the diagram and gluing the left edge to the right edge. The chain of fifths then forms a closed line and the proximity of the three major triads in the C major scale becomes apparent. A corresponding transfer of the same information to a circle of fifths "dial", in which the intonation changes are entered in a radial direction, would be a fair, but also unusual representation. In circular arrangements of the chromatic scale, the intervals are often represented as angles. The syntonic comma in the fundamental frequency ratio 81/80 measures just under 22 cents and should correspond to an angle of slightly less than 6° in Descartes' circular diagram in Figure 3 on the left. In contrast to the inconsistent angles in this manuscript, the angles in the Latin first printing correspond quite precisely to the interval sizes, cf. Muzzulini (2015, 197-199), Wardhaugh (2008). Mersenne's circular diagram in figure 3 on the right arranges the twelve notes of the chromatic scale on an almost regular dodecagon. The connections between the notes are labeled with the corresponding frequency ratios. The grid representation in Figure 2 on the right can be derived from this.

In conventional two-dimensional and interactive screen displays, the asymmetry mentioned above could also be compensated for by making the arrangement of the chords cyclically permutable at the touch of a button. Such permutations would also make it easy to determine whether different scales have the same internal structure by directly comparing diagrams, i.e. whether they emerge from each other through transpositions true to the interval if they were displayed on the same webpage. A scale considered by Isaac Newton, for example, emerges from that of Mersenne through a transposition by a pure fifth, which corresponds to a cyclic permutation by one unit. These relationships can be seen directly in a grid representation. If we imagine Euler's chromatic scale transposed downwards by a pure major third, for example, then all twelve points are moved downwards by one grid unit, so that the new bottom row contains the notes D flat, A flat, E flat and B flat. The geometric arrangement of the twelve dots, which represents the inner structure, has not changed. The transposed form makes C major appear as part of a chromatic scale with four B-flats and a sharp, and it differs from Mersenne's solution (figure 2 right) only in the intonation of a single note. In Mersenne, the B flat major triad is in Pythagorean intonation, its fifth is pure, the major third in the ratio 81/64 results from four pure fifths (minus two octaves).

With little programming effort, key figures such as the total mean square deviation of the concrete triads from the tuned triads could be calculated from the rich numerical material of the lexicon. Scales that are separated by transpositions agree in the deviation mentioned, and the different structure of the scale can be deduced with certainty from the difference in the key figures. This allows duplicates and equivalent scales to be determined semi-automatically. The knowledge and visualization of such relationships would be helpful for orientation in the very extensive numerical and pictorial material. James M. Barbour consistently gives the mean deviation and the standard deviation from the same-level scale in cents for his extensive numerical material on twelve-level scales (Barber 1951). It would be more expedient to evaluate the deviations of the twelve major triads from the pure intonation in an analogous way (cf. Hall 1973), in which case small values mean proximity to the Lexicon of moods standing, ideally tuned triads.

As part of the project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation Sound Color Space of the Zurich University of the Arts were also interactive audiovisual tools to syntonic (i.e. quint/third-octave-based tunings) with grid, circle and spiral arrangements and tested in the context of a virtual museum published, such as the lexicon of moods with synthetic sounds.

Only in recent years has the visualization of music theory and its history as an independent branch of diagrammatology with references to musical iconology increasingly come to the attention of philosophy, aesthetics and musicology (Krämer 2016, 179-193). This essay attempted to point out parallels between historical diagrams of harmonics and contemporary representations, which are only possible in the context of digitalization and the digital humanities. Diagrams reveal the essence of theories and models, and they have didactic potential that seems to do almost without words. The didactic value of visualization has not always been assessed in the same way throughout history. While didactic visualization seemed to play a subordinate role in the 18th century, the idea of the cyclical permutation of tones and harmonies in pitch structures outlined above has its precursors in dynamic didactic tools of the 16th century. For example, elaborately designed books from this period sometimes contain multi-layered diagrams with rotating parts for teaching elementary musical knowledge (cf. Weiss, S. F., 2019).

Barbieri, P. (2002). The evolution of open-chain enharmonic keyboards c1480-1650. In: Yearbook of Musicology (2002), S. 145-184

Barbour, J. M. (1951). Tuning and temperament. A historical survey. Reprint: East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, Da Capo Press: New York 1972

Barkowsky, J. (2007). Mathematical sources of musical acoustics. Wilhelmshaven : Florian Noetzel Verlag

Descartes, R. (1619). Compendium MusicæMs. Middelburg, fol. 171r (c. 1628)

Duffin, R. W. (2007). How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care). W. W. Norton, New York

Euler, L. (1739). Tentamen novae theoriae musicae. Petersburg 1739 (pp. 147, 279)

Hall, D. (1973). The Objective Measurement of Goodness-of-Fit for Tunings and Temperaments. In: Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 274-290. https://doi.org/10.2307/843344

Kirnbauer, M. (2002). "Si possono suonare i Madrigali del Principe" - The viols of G. B. Doni and chromatic-enharmonic music in Rome in the 17th century. In: Yearbook of Musicology (2002), S. 229-250. http://doi.org/10.5169/seals-835143

Krämer, S. (2016). Figuration, Anschaung, Erkenntnis - Grundlinien einer Diagrammatologie. suhrkamp paperback science 2176. 179-193

Lindley, M & Turner-Smith, R. (1993). Mathematical Models of Musical Scales - A New Approach. Publisher for Systematic Musicology, Bonn

Lindley, M. (1987). Mood and temperature. History of music theory Volume 6, Listening, measuring and calculating in the early modern period, S. 109-331

Mersenne, M. (1636). Harmonie Universelle, contenant la Theorie et la Pratique de la Musique, Paris 1636, Traitez des Consonances, des Dissonances, des Genres, des Modes & de la Composition, Livre Second, Des Dissonances, p.132 (ed. by Fr. Lesure, 3 vols., facs. p. 1965-1975)

Muzzulini, D. (2015). The Geometry of Musical Logarithms. Acta Musicologica LXXXVII/2 (2015), 193-216. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5541789

Muzzulini, D. (2017). Chromatic scales, Syntonic chromatic scales. In: Sound Color Space (2017)

Muzzulini, D. (2020). Isaac Newton's Microtonal Approach to Just Intonation. Empirical Musicology Review, Vol 15, No 3-4 (2020), pp. 223-248. http://dx.doi.org/10.18061/emr.v15i3-4.7647

Praetorius, M. (1619). Syntagma musicum, vol. II, Wolfenbüttel

Rasch, R. (2002). Why were enharmonic keyboards built? - From Nicola Vicentino (1555) to Michael Bulyowsky (1699). In: Yearbook of Musicology (2002), 36-93

Swiss Yearbook for Musicology (2002). Chromatic and enharmonic music, Neue Folge 22, edited by Joseph Williman, Peter Lang, Bern 2003

Sound Color Space - A Virtual MuseumZurich University of the Arts, 2017, https://2017.sound-colour-space.zhdk.ch

Wardhaugh, B. (2008). Musical logarithms in the seventeenth century: Descartes, Mercator, Newton. In: Historia Mathematica, Volume 35, Issue 1, February 2008, 19-36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hm.2007.05.002

Weiss, S. F. (2019). Ambrosius Wilfflingseder's Erotemata musices. https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/MusicalVolvelles/

Wright, D. (2002). The cimbalo chromatico and other Italian string keyboard instruments with divided accidentals. In: Yearbook of Musicology (2002), 105-136

Compared to residents of rural areas, city dwellers go to classical concerts and art exhibitions more than twice as often. These are the findings of a study conducted by Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) as part of the "Cultural Education and Cultural Participation in Germany" project.

To this end, a baseline study was conducted in 2018, in which 2592 people aged 15 and over were surveyed in face-to-face interviews. At the same time, official statistics were used to determine the availability of cultural institutions such as opera houses and cinemas in the municipalities. In towns with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants, the chance of finding a theater or orchestra is almost zero.

Overall, cultural visits are quite rare: Only a portion of the population takes advantage of the cultural offerings surveyed at all, meaning that on average a single visit per year is the norm. People go to the cinema most often: the urban population 4.2 times a year, the rural population 2.7 times a year. For classical concerts and operas, the respective average figures are 1.4 for metropolitan areas and 0.6 for less populated regions.

More info: https://kulturpartizipation.uni-mainz.de

Sándor Veress was of great importance for Swiss music history. He actually had his sights set on a career in the United States. But when the teaching position in Pittsburgh fell through due to his former membership of the Hungarian Communist Party, Veress ended up in Bern. He remained there from 1949 until the end of his life in 1992, teaching renowned Swiss composers and musicologists as a respected university lecturer. His students included Theo Hirsbrunner, Heinz Holliger, Urs Peter Schneider, Jürg Wyttenbach and Roland Moser.

The anthology Sándor Veress provides lively insights. Roland Moser reports positive things about his teacher, who - probably in a mixture of modesty, pedagogical flair and interest in others - never "mentioned or showed his own works" in class (p. 72). Heinz Holliger's comments and analyses of Veress's works on the Passacaglia concertante for oboe and string orchestra (1961) and the musicologist Bodo Bischoff's reflections on the late work Glass cantilever game for mixed choir and chamber orchestra (1978).

Veress, a pupil of none other than Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, was not an avant-gardist. Although he had words of praise for the sound-surface composition of his former pupil György Ligeti (p. 43), he was skeptical or even hostile towards the serialism of the 1950s. The praise for Ligeti can be found in his wonderful text printed in English New Trends in European Music since World War II. Here Sándor Veress shows himself to be not only an empathetic observer, but also an immensely educated, interdisciplinary thinking art and cultural scholar in his sincere efforts to anchor 20th century music in society. This very readable anthology of 15 essays is therefore not only informative for Veress researchers; it provides all interested parties with a wealth of information far from the beaten track of a 20th century musical ideology of progress.

Sándor Veress, edited by Ulrich Tadday, Musik-Konzepte issue 192/193, 197 p., € 38.00, Edition Text und Kritik, Munich 2021, ISBN 978-3-96707-389-8

The Three romances for violin and piano by Clara Schumann, with their melancholy, harmonically rich melodic arcs, cheerful bird calls and lively accompaniment, immediately strike a chord with the listener. Their new edition by the internationally active violinist and teacher Jacqueline Ross has important advantages: In a trilingual introduction, she tells how Clara created the Romances in admiration of Joseph Joachim's playing. Romances were popular with the Schumanns because they paid more attention to subjectivity, spontaneity and emotional expression through a freer understanding of form. Robert always encouraged his wife to compose and even had songs printed by the two of them together.

The autograph of the first Romance, which Clara gave to her friend and violinist Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski and which is also printed in this edition, provides evidence of various versions. They had evidently worked on it together. Certain improvements, made on the occasion of joint performances of the Romances with Joseph Joachim, did not make it into the printed first edition published by Breitkopf in 1856. However, they have been incorporated into the original text available here. The exclusively English Critical Commentary describes the differences between the various autographs and manuscripts and the first edition. The Performing Practice Commentary is a worthwhile textbook on 19th-century performance practice and gives performance suggestions for many passages of each Romance. Two violin parts are provided: an Urtext with some fingerings handed down by Joachim and a part arranged by Ross, whose suggestions are stylistically correct.

For me, Clara's Three romances inseparable from Robert's Five pieces in folk styleoriginally for violoncello and piano, published for violin by Ernst Herttrich (Henle, HN 911). In April 1849 Clara wrote in her diary: "These pieces are of such freshness and originality that I was completely enchanted." It can be assumed that the violin version goes back to Schumann; and Joseph Joachim had already performed one of the pieces in 1853. When playing the piece, however, it turns out that the violin - sounding an octave higher - is too separate from the piano, which is unchanged from the cello version; there is a tonal gap.

Clara Schumann: Three Romances for violin and piano op. 22, edited by Jacqueline Ross, BA 10947, € 19.95, Bärenreiter, Kassel 

Church musician and editor Bernd Stegmann has undertaken a commendable undertaking: An overview of European choral literature, beginning at the end of the 16th century up to the present day. The comprehensive compendium from Bärenreiter-Verlag, a reliable supplier of choral literature of all kinds for decades, is aimed at choir conductors and interested singers alike. Arranged alphabetically, the 800 works of a cappella choral music are accompanied by notes on the history of their composition, performance practice and aesthetic aspects, making practical repertoire work easier. A categorization into levels of difficulty from 1 to 5 (geared towards a choir of "medium ability") can serve as a guide if a work has not yet been rehearsed. The catchy introduction allows the user to travel through European music history and participate in the developments of composition, interpretation and cultural practice of communal vocal music.

The portraits of the works vary in depth; the 22 authors succeed in providing differentiated analyses, descriptions of the works and information on the history of their creation as well as a "ranking" within the wide-ranging musical and cultural-historical treasure trove of "choral music". The comprehensive 718-page handbook also includes indexes on composers, authors, text sources and scoring requirements, a practical categorization for quick orientation; the performance period and publisher are also given for all works.

This successful handbook encourages you to take a closer look at the actual content of your daily work or to consider one or two unknown works for your own ensemble. And it gives choir conductors the motivation to be prepared for better times with programmatic work after the gloomy winter of the pandemic.

Handbook of choral music. 800 works from six centuries, edited by Bernd Stegmann, XX + 718 p., € 89.99, Bärenreiter/J.B. Metzler, Kassel/Stuttgart 2021, ISBN 978-3-7618-2342-2

With this work, the composer and organist Pier Damiano Peretti, who teaches at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, makes an interesting contribution to the genre of "new music for historical organs" - an idea that is fortunately inspiring more and more composers and will hopefully also have a growing influence on the concert programs of many organists. Peretti starts from a baroque instrument of the southern German-Austrian type, of which there are also several examples in Switzerland, i.e. a two-manual organ with a short octave in the manual and pedal and an unequal temperament in the style of the 18th century. The registration instructions can also be easily realized on smaller instruments. Although a pedal is necessary, it does not take on any special functions, which is also indicated by the title Quasi manualiter which places the work in the Baroque style between "ecclesiastical publicity and domestic privacy" and alludes to the "interchangeability" of keyboard instruments of all kinds at the time.

An etude-like, monotonous first movement opens the cycle, which is followed by a playful little movement for a four-foot flute entitled "fantastico". A movement that oscillates between sarabande ("quasi broken village organ") and agile corrente forms the centerpiece; a short recitative and a dance-like final movement complete the approximately ten-minute work. In these short pieces, which are quite demanding in terms of playing technique and rhythm, Peretti skillfully creates a link between the tonal language of our time and a musical gesture that, while hinting at its historical models, does not come across as "neo-baroque". Conclusion: an enrichment of the repertoire that can be excellently combined with baroque works.

Pier Damiano Peretti: Quasi manualiter for organ, D 02 531, € 14.95, Doblinger, Vienna

The guitar scene is a peculiar one. In the "parallel universe" of music history, there is much by Johann Sebastian Bach, but also many minor masters who certainly played well, but could not always compose well. Raoul Morat from Lucerne and his Danish duo partner Christian Fergo are aware of this problem, and they respond to it in a very clever way with arrangements by the great masters. After Franz Schubert, they have now taken on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. They transcribed the four piano sonatas nos. 4, 5, 10 and 11 for their "Viennese guitars" with nine strings each, which were common in the mid-19th century. - And the result is something special.

Mozart comes across very finely. The ornaments sound wonderful and the runs - which rightly frighten many a pianist - are completely effortless. It even seems as if the piano sonatas in the duo have a little more dynamism and vitality than on the solo piano. It simply sounds natural and like a beautifully straightforward musical flow. This is also helped by the fact that the two of them hold back with guitaristic mannerisms. They only rarely use harmonics, only very subtly coloring the sound with their right plucking hand without playing too close to the bridge. In short: it sounds refreshingly "unguitaristic".

Mozart connoisseurs might frown at such an arrangement, the guitarists write in their successful booklet text. But they have good arguments ready. After all, the Steinway is at least as far removed from 18th century keyboard instruments as it is from Viennese guitars. They are right! After listening to this CD, you won't want to hear Mozart on the concert grand any more.

After Ernest Ansermet, the legendary founder of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Armin Jordan (1932-2006) was the second great artistic personality to have a lasting influence on this orchestra in French-speaking Switzerland. Now, fifteen years after his death, a tribute CD is being released with a recording that Jordan was able to make with cellist François Guye, but which was never released.

Jordan may have been born in Lucerne, but the francophone was in his blood. He was a passionate and ardent musician and anything but a despot. Instead, he treated his orchestral musicians as equals, insisting that they all address him as a fatherly friend. And he loved music theater and opera. The Theater Basel, where he was Music Director of the Opera for almost twenty years (until 1989), was his musical home.

Jordan took over the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande from Horst Stein in 1985 and remained loyal to it for twelve years. With numerous tours, for example to Japan, Belgium, Great Britain and South Korea, he consolidated the orchestra's international reputation, which he also documented with many recordings. It was not least the specific sound of the OSR that set it apart from other orchestras and made major labels sit up and take notice. Jordan's recordings were mainly released by Erato. The warm, intimate sound also characterizes the tribute CD, which begins with Ernest Bloch's Schelomo-Rhapsody (1916) and Henri Dutilleux's Tout un monde lointain (1967-70) brings together special works. However, this has now been published by Cascavelle.

You don't have to listen for long to recognize Jordan's dramaturgical power, his vivid art of presentation. Bloch's rhapsody particularly benefits from this, as it tells the drama of the dying Schelomo, who bitterly regrets the ostentatiousness of his rule. The fabulous cellist François Guye is also able to portray Schelomo with an intimately excited cantilena.

Like Ernest Ansermet, Jordan particularly cultivated the Swiss-French school with Arthur Honegger, Othmar Schoeck and Frank Martin; the music of Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy was also regularly on the OSR's programs. Dutilleux's Tout un monde lointain for cello and orchestra. The recording is lucid and finely balanced in terms of chamber music. The soloist and orchestra unfold a lyrical dialogue that magically illuminates the modern colors of the work. An homage to Armin Jordan could not be more fitting.

When asked about his influences, the German jazz musician Gilbert Paeffgen (born 1958) once explained in an interview: "What appeals to me are people, musicians and drummers with charisma, independence and profile, who have something to say." And Paeffgen, who has lived in Switzerland since the late seventies, has found just such a person in his duo partner Susanna Dill.

After Legendes d'Hiver (2010) and 13 Épisodes lumineux et enjoués (2015), the two have published under the title Between the trains have now released their third collaboration. It has become an invitation to roam freely through one's own memories, thoughts and realities. The basis for this is the ascetic and almost emaciated sound that the two create. This is based solely on Dill's accordion and Paeffgen's dulcimer. The eleven pieces take their time to unfold and to create specific sounds. In return, they offer space and leisure.

The album is characterized by austerity rather than playfulness, yet the mostly solemn compositions are sensitive and sensual throughout. While the title track seems to promise both coming and going, tracks such as the ethereal-sounding Dense scurrying or the pensive Fairy tales from station to station and from style to style. The motifs inspired by musette, tango, Celtic folk and modern classical music bear witness not only to the two musicians' love of improvisation, but also to their lyrical creativity.

With Between the trains Dill and Paeffgen have succeeded in creating a kind of soundtrack, which - similar to Ry Cooder's Paris, Texas - Stories full of longing that are enraptured, tangible and delicate at the same time. The result is an impressive work by two impressive artists who have found a common expression.

Susanna Dill and Gilbert Paeffgen: Between the Trains. Everest Records er_096