Campagnoli: 41 Caprices, Op. 22: for Viola: Urtext edition

The Italian composer Bartolomeo Campagnoli (1751-1827) may have achieved more lasting success with his pedagogical works than with his symphonic and chamber works, for his last work is the 41 Caprices pour l'Alto Viola, opus 22, dedicated to his friend François Grassi, a fellow violinist in the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Today the Caprices are used by viola players not only for their aesthetic beauty, but for their demanding progressive technique and use of double strings, as well as possessing elements that are unmistakable and unprecedented in their interpretative bravura, musicality and supreme virtuosity at the time they were written for the viola.Although the viola was not a strange instrument for Campagnoli, it should be noted that, with the exception of the quartet parts, he did not write any specific works for this instrument before the 41 Caprices, perhaps because of the general scarcity of viola literature or the lack of virtuoso violists for the time, leaving many questions unanswered.As for bowings, Campagnoli employs many articulations of the period, including staccato and legato. However, there is an absence of arcades of either up- or down-bow preference within the Caprices. In our RN Verlag volume, we have preserved the composer's fingerings and bowings.Campagnoli was notably influenced by the pedagogical treatises of Pierre Baillot, Pierre Rode and especially Rodolphe Kreutzer, with his 42 Etudes ou Caprices pour Violon. Perhaps there is a connection in Campagnoli's visit to Paris in 1801 and his meeting with Kreutzer, which may have led him towards the end of his life to a vision of noticing the viola as a solo instrument with great interpretative capabilities.We have used as source material C.F.Peters Plate 7513, published in Leipzig (ca. 1886) but due to numerous unauthorised additions to the musical text, this edition has no value as a primary source, as each publisher over time has modified tempos, bowings, fingerings, dynamics and articulation, providing contrasts and removing the essence of the composer's intent, therefore, the addition of any fingering, bowing or dynamics can produce results different and sometimes contradictory to Campagnoli's intentions.The RN Verlag aims to serve practical purposes for viola players, avoiding the temptation to overload the score with textual material by strictly mentioning disagreements or discrepancies between the first and later editions, although some decisions have been made tacitly about the musical text, but without altering the composer's meaning. With few exceptions, it has been avoided to differentiate between accent marks or diminuendo hairpins, as it is a difficult task to differentiate, although the editor has added in grey colour and in square brackets possible solutions in some cases directly on the score. The editor would like to thank the institutions that have provided the material for this research. Read more