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Ill.1. out that it could not have been part of Brod’s original publication. This was not the only fingering chart interpolated into Brod’s method: another copy of the method owned by oboe collector Richard Abel in Pittsburgh, USA features the Tablature générale du hautbois à 12 clefs compiled by Émile Corret in 1855. (This chart is reproduced as an independent publication in the Fuzeau anthology III, 233.) There are more authoritative copies of Brod’s method which would have better served Fuzeau’s needs in the Bibliothèque nationale (A.540, Ci.8 which has an autograph dedication to Cherubini but is apparently lost) and in private collections. For sake of completeness, Brod’s original chart is reproduced as Ill.1. Long-lasting and far-reaching in its influence, Sellner’s Theoretisch praktische Oboe schule (Vienna: Sauer & Leidesdorf, 1824) was arguably the most significant oboe method of the nineteenth century. The Fuzeau team dates the French version to 1835, but this seems too late. Translations were generally produced within a few months or years of the original. I propose 1827, 28 Double Reed News 85 Winter 2008 which is both closer to the 1824 release of the original Viennese edition, and matches to the sequence of the publisher’s plate numbers, and also the same year that an Italian version of Sellner’s text was printed by Pozzi of Mendrisio. It remains something of a curiosity that a French translation of Sellner’s method was released at all. Ill.2. There are no records of Sellner-system oboes being used in France, so who would have bought a method that addresses so directly the technique of this particular oboe? Nor is there any reason to believe that Fouquet, the principal oboist at the Opéra Italien who reviewed the translation, played any oboe other than what would have been standard in France at the time. Despite this, the translation remained in print and is found in a Triebert catalogue from 1866, and Lemoine, who bought the stock of Richault, the work’s original publisher, continued to offer it into the 1890s. Clearly French oboists considered the musical content sufficiently useful to warrant keeping the work in print. While it was sensible for Fuzeau to print just the French text and omit the 200-odd pages of music from Sellner’s method (these will at any rate appear in the German/Austrian volumes), a more serious omission is one of the most substantive additions to the French edition: the fingering chart for French oboe that would certainly have increased the method’s salability in France. This chart also found its way into copies of Brod’s method, including the one in the Bodleian library in Oxford (see ill. 2).
A similar situation exists with Barret’s method as reproduced by Fuzeau. This is another French translation of a foreign method originally printed virtually simultaneously with the release of the original version. The complete English edition is also reproduced in the Fuzeau volumes of English oboe methods. If the modern editors omitted the music from the French version of Sellner, why did they opt to reproduce the entire musical text of Barret’s substantial work, particularly given that the hefty 206 pages of studies were printed from exactly the same plates for both English and French editions? Vény’s Méthode abrégée (Volume II) was released with the title of Méthode complete. The ‘completion’ constituted the re-engraving of the fingering charts, plus the insertion of two new ones for more modern oboe designs, and the addition of Quatre grandes études by Bretonnière. Otherwise the méthode complete re-used exactly the same plates as the Méthode abrégée. Even though it was published in Paris by Cotelle around 1850, and therefore falls within Fuzeau’s chronological purview, the Méthode complete does not appear in the anthology. The fact that the only extant copies of the Méthode complete are found beyond the borders of France in libraries in The Hague and Berlin may explain why the French editors overlooked this work. The omission is unfortunate, not only for the excellent studies by Bretonnière, but the fingering charts for Triebert’s système 5 and Boehmmodel oboes which include precise instructions on the use of the clef à octavier (octave key) and clarify our understanding of the progressive introduction of mechanism to the oboe in the nineteenth century. It is often difficult to read the fingerings in the chart that Fuzeau has included from the Méthode abrégée (II:31). Some of the open holes are smudged and look like closed holes. (As a footnote let me add that with luck we can look forward to seeing Vény’s worthwhile set of studies with piano accompaniment published by Pozzi of Mendrisio in the Italian volume.) “ Otherwise the méthode complete re-used exactly the same plates as the Méthode abrégée. ” Fuzeau prints the Méthode pour le hautbois by Stanislas Verroust from a copy at the Bibliothèque National, taking the date 1857 stamped on its title page as an indication of its date of publication. However the library was not in the habit of providing publication dates: this is the acquisition date. Judging from its contents, this method originated in the early 1840s rather than the end of the next decade. Verroust took over from his teacher Gustave Vogt as professor at the Conservatoire in 1853, but prior to this he taught at the École de musique militaire. The inclusion of a fingering chart for hautbois pastoral, an instrument played by amateurs and particularly military musicians, suggests that this method was produced while Verroust was still teaching at the École, rather than later when he was training the professional orchestral oboists at the Conservatoire. Kastner’s Méthode élémentaire pour le hautbois was an international publication printed in Paris by Troupenas and Co, and in Leipzig by Breitkopf und Härtel (1844). The same year an Italian version – Metodo elementare per Oboe – appeared from Lucca and Ricordi. Fuzeau used the copy of the French-German edition in the British Library but did not reproduce the third fingering chart for 11-keyed oboe. Is the chart missing from this copy? The chart was under the editor’s noses at the Bibliothèque national (Vm8.i.10) and likewise appears in the Italian editions. This omission skews the picture that Kastner provided of the oboes in use at the time he was writing. Here is the chart. Other specialised works are omitted from the anthology. One is Joseph Küffner’s Principes élémentaires de la musique et gamme de hautbois suivis de 24 duos instructifs d’une difficulté progressive pour deux hautbois Op.199 (text in French and German, Mainz, Paris and Anvers: Schott, 1826; a copy is found in the library of the Hochschule für Musik in Köln). The editors did not reject French Kastner, 11-keyed oboe Double Reed News 85 Winter 2008 29
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Page 10 and 11: Reports and News Continuing my show
Page 12 and 13: John Waite, 15 years: The Day start
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Page 16 and 17: pp109-116. (Both arias have wonderf
Page 18 and 19: (Wonderful ensemble obbligato writi
Page 20 and 21: Oboes is a 5-movement work which us
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Page 26 and 27: Facsimilies by Fuzeau These three v
Page 30 and 31: versions of other foreign oboe meth
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Double Reed 70 cover - British Double Reed Society

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