Fidel Perez and Professor David Day, HBLL Music and Dance Library

The written violin repertoire is vast, yet the amount of published material is relatively limited to performers. Available viola repertoire is even narrower. A person can easily find pieces by the most famous composers, such as Beethoven, Mozart and Bach, in a music library. These pieces, however, represent only a mere fraction of actual written material. There are many lesser-known composers whose works have been virtually ignored. The number of pieces available to us in modern day editions is probably only half of what has actually been written; many of those still unpublished pieces have gone totally unknown, with only the actual manuscript or a first edition surviving. These forgotten pieces carry the potential to be masterworks, yet we have little or no knowledge about them. It is interesting to know that Felix Mendelssohn revived the public interest in the works of Bach and Schubert.

Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library holds the Primrose International Viola Archive (PIVA), which is named after the eminent violist and pedagogue William Primrose. It is the largest single collection of viola repertoire in the world, and an indispensable resource for music performers and teachers. A new collection has been added to the archive, which includes more than 3,000 pieces of early viola repertoire, most of which has been out of print for more than 200 years. The European musicologist Ulrich Drüner donated this collection and it represents a tremendous asset for the HBLL. However, because many of these scores are rare early editions that date back to the late 1700s and early 1800s, students are not able remove them from the library for performance or study. This collection contains numerous scores for several stringed instruments, ranging from solo works to small chamber ensembles. Most of these scores are rare first editions, and the one I chose for this project might very well be the only one in existence.

My work on this ORCA grant project focused on a work by the French violinist and pedagogue Rodolphe Kreutzer. I chose the “Duetto IV” from his Six Duo Dialogues pour Violon et Alto, op. 2. Rodolphe Kreutzer was born in Versailles, and was initially taught by his father and later by Anton Stamitz. He became one of the foremost violinists of his day and appeared as a soloist numerous times early in his life. He was a violin professor at the Paris Conservatoire from its foundation in 1795 until 1826. One of his significant achievements was working with violinists Pierre Rode and Pierre Baillot to co-author the Conservatoire’s violin method. Kreutzer’s works are important because he is considered to be among the founders of the French school of violin playing.

It was an enriching experience to do research on early music editions. The first challenge I faced was to find the appropriate source containing the complete catalog of compositions by Rodolphe Kreutzer. I had the chance to browse the microfilms from the following libraries: Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin – Katalog der Musicabt, Tschechische Nationalbibliothek Prag, Katalog der Musikabteilung, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and no earlier or later copies of this specific work were found in any of them. Considering that this copy of the music seemed to be so unique, or at least extremely rare, I chose to make the least amount of changes or corrections to the music, so as to preserve its stylistic purity and closeness to the original. The score was edited using Finale Music Notation software, at the HBLL Music and Dance Library.

The piece was performed in a public recital given at the HBLL Auditorium at the beginning of the Fall Semester of 2008. An audio recording was also prepared at the “Studio Y” facility in the Harris Fine Arts Center. Both the audio CD and the complete Score and parts will be submitted to the Music and Dance Library’s PIVA collection and it will be made available for students to check out.