IMSLP Forums

Dear all

I'd like to tell you how amazing job you are doing here.

I am a percussionist and I would like to ask you kindly for a Hector Berlioz - Grande messe des morts (Requiem) - original timpani part.
I notcied that there is already timpani part uploaded, but it is arrangement for 12 timpani and I need original one.

I would be grateful if someone could help.

Thank you!

Martin

Dear Martin,

I was aware that the timpani parts in the Grande messe des morts were edited to a smaller number of timps and players by Malherbe and Weingartner, and this one of the less ideal features of having the orchestral parts from the “Old Berlioz Edition”. I have done some typesets of various movements, but not all – it’s a lot of work!

So if you are able to wait a while, I’ll dig out my scores and do a typeset of the original timpani parts for 10 players/16 drums. I can’t promise to do a complete job of this immediately for you, because for example I would have to add movements such as the Rex tremendæ which I haven’t looked at all. If you need it “asap”, let me know and I’ll do what movements I’ve already got available, and you’ll have to use the “reduction” for the remainder of the work.

Regards, Philip

Martin:
Are you or somebody you know going to be performing the Berlioz Requiem with such parts? Where and when? I'd love to hear it. I trust if you are going through the trouble and expense of 16 iimpani and 10 players that the ensemble will also place the brass ensembles properly (at the corners of the main performing ensemble -- not a "surround sound" placement) and will turn up a "Grosse caisse roulante" that is actually pitched in B-flat. In addition to the timpani all being correctly tuned, I would expect to hear 10 pairs of cymbals and 4 tam-tams unleashed when the score specifies them as well as a choir of at least 210 and an orchestra containing 50 violins (25 each 1st and 2nd). EVERY performance I've heard of this piece has fallen short of at least one of these requirements. Most fail in several areas including, in the Sanctus, solo tenors who seem to think they are belting a Puccini aria. It would be nice to have 10 tenors from the choir do this movement, as is an option in the score. And of course the whole thing must occur in an appropriately reverberant environment. I've never heard a live performance of the piece outside of a regular concert hall, even the best of which have too short a reverb time to fill in the pauses Berlioz left open for the ambience. Some of the otherwise great-sounding recordings of the work (Telarc) are far too "dry." Compared to the Weingartner timpani rescoring, I'd consider these other requirements more musically significant.

--Sixtus

Martin,

after posting yesterday I remembered I had loaned my scores to a friend (I’m seeing him on Monday next) as he’d had a bit of a Requiem obsession going on, so he has both my Malherbe & Weingartner Requiem as well as the New Berlioz Edition scores of the Requiem and the Messe solenelle (which preserves the earliest surviving version of the Tuba mirum passage). So I can probably do movements II. Dies iræ and X. Agnus Dei now, but IV. Rex tremendæ and VI. Lacrymosa will have to wait till next week. Is that ok with you?

Sixtus,

I am naturally impressed by your scrupulous attention to Berlioz’s precise specifications!

The constitution of the 50 or so brass instruments in the Requiem is also sometimes variable: natural horns and trumpets in the various keys specified by Berlioz to achieve a chromatic rather than diatonic palette require the usual cabalistic skills of transposition from players of modern instruments as well as demanding a particular mental gymnastic ability of the conductor, but the loss – particularly where the horns are concerned – is a distinct lack of colour. The trumpets of the first orchestra should of course be piston cornets, which have a particularly sweeter sound than modern trumpets. Berlioz specified all sixteen trombones should be tenors, which is essential for the pedal effects in the Hostias and Agnus Dei, however as many orchestral trombonists nowadays use triggered double trombones to cover tenor and bass trombone parts this is often impractical. Finally, the tuba is a post-1850 substitution for the ophicléide, and the fourth orchestra should have in addition the “grande ophicléide monstre”, “amusing to imagine but impractical to duplicate”, as Kern Holoman put it.

In practice orchestras go looking for help finding extra musicians when putting on the Grande messe des morts, and in the English context this often means enlisting some players from brass bands as no normal orchestra has 50 personnel on the list of casuals for the brass alone, so tubas end up being the normal bass of the brass choirs. There is of course a worldwide “ophicléide society”, but finding six or so of them in the one city is probably an impossibility. (As far as I know, there’s just the one ophicléidist here in Melbourne.)

PML

pml wrote: and the fourth orchestra should have in addition the “grande ophicléide monstre”, “amusing to imagine but impractical to duplicate”

I cannot imagine a more praiseworthy cause to which modern sampling and synthesis systems might be put.

While we're talking authenticity, I know of two recordings of the Requiem in the "original acoustics" (the Invalides chapel of the work's premier): Scherchen's and Bernstein's. The latter is on DVD and I highly recommend it, for both the performance and for the sense of the physical and acoustic space it conveys. In fact, in terms of sonic authenticity, it's likely that the acoustics of the church has changed less since the 19th century than the instruments played in it. Another must-see is the Gardiner DVD of the Fantastique with original instruments and acoustics (The old Paris Conservatory, again the site of the premier). The dryness of the sound here lets the piano woodwind chord on the 3rd beat of the first and third bars (m.64 and 66) of the first movement allegro peek through the reverb. You hardly ever hear this on recordings nor, in my experience, in a typical live performance. My sense of Berlioz' style is that he never scored anything that was not intended to be audible in performance (like Mahler and unlike some of the more overloaded passages in R. Strauss).

--Sixtus

Dear All,

Thank you so much for your willingness to help.
I also tried to do some typing by myself but those will not do - actually now I need scanned original material which would be not copyrighted of course.
If you aquired original timpani score material, and it is actually legal to upload those, it would be great if you could help me with that.

Thank you,

Martin

IMSLP #72936 is up – knock yourself out!

It’s cued fairly much the same as Malherbe and Weingartner’s arrangement, which is adequate for the most part. I might revise it to include the rehearsal marks from the New Berlioz Edition as well (they use letters rather than numbers, so there is no ambiguity between the two schemes).

PML