Pianophilia

Thankyou very much for these two scores Jean-seb,
It is great to have a couple more of his works.

Peter (liveforpiano).

Seconded, Jean-seb. I especially like the Serenade--a titillating little bonbon for sure.

I have ordered and been sent a copy of Élie Miriam Delaborde's second Étude de Concert, from the British Library.

The etude itself, or whatever little I can yet play of it, sounds good and is technically challenging (as one would expect from the son of Alkan and a pupil of Moscheles and Henselt!) - but the letter that preceded its delivery stated that I could not share it publicly in any way, despite having paid enough for what I was hoping would be a better quality copy.

So, I thought I would ask people's opinion of the BL's prohibition of the copy?
Generally, I'm quite happy to go along with prohibitions like this, but considering the cost of the copy and the rarity of the work, I've been wrestling with the question of whether or not to post it anywhere.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
4c

I share you concern, since the costs of BL surpass even a good antiquarian copy. I wouldn't post it at IMSLP but here .... why not?

I expect you know that although the music may be public domain the institution or person that created the images can hold a copyright on the images themselves. Personally I find this bizarre, as if scanning is equated with art-photography.

Still, a way around this is to clean up the images of library marks and any extraneous scruffiness and sharpening the image in black and white by using a combination of Irfanview and Photoshop, or similar combinations. It wouldn't remove the copyright but the images would probably look quite different and of a superior quality making the copyright infringement difficult to argue.

Hi 4candles,

The etude which you mentioned sounds like an extremely rare and fascinating score. I echo Rob's and Caprotti's thoughts on this issue, and encourage you to post. I too have a number of library orders in the works, and fully plan to post all the material on this site. Your generosity I am sure would be appreciated by many PP members!

All Best,

Frank

Thanks for all your encouragement and advice.

I'm new at the scanning business and am not familiar with the workings of IrFanView (or Photoshop for that matter)... not looking too good is it!

I will see what I can do and hopefully will be able to post it in the coming weeks.

Best,
4c

Has been a little while since we had a new set of scintilating etudes......here are Six Characteristic Etudes by Bernard Courlaender. I have seen a date for the etudes - 1854, but can not seem to find any information on Courlaender, beyond he was the court pianist to the King of Denmark.
Malcolm & Mr P

4candles wrote:I have ordered and been sent a copy of Élie Miriam Delaborde's second Étude de Concert, from the British Library.

The etude itself, or whatever little I can yet play of it, sounds good and is technically challenging (as one would expect from the son of Alkan and a pupil of Moscheles and Henselt!) -

As promised, here is a (not very good quality) scan and PDF of Delaborde's Second Étude de Concert.

The most I could do with it with the software at my disposal was scan the pages as black and white, 600dpi JPEGs and set the contrast at 100%, which seems to have cleared it a little, though the sharpness of the notes leaves quite a bit to be desired unfortunately.

If anyone would like an alternative crack at it, I can send the original JPEGs or send some alternative scans via ftp upload.

Otherwise... enjoy!

Thank you for this etude.