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Double Bass Why Zimmermann why?

#2
Honestly? So that bassists couldn't find the original (that was normally out of copyright) and make their own editions.

And occasionally, because the piece was of suspect authorship, and slightly more rarely because Zimmerman made substantive changes.

Whether it was Zimmerman's call or International Editions' call, I couldn't tell you.
 
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#3
I suppose it would have been nice to include opus numbers for those bassists that like to think of themselves as scholars of the instrument, but I'm guessing that Zimmerman and the publishers didn't think that bass players, in general, were interested in opus numbers or anything else that only musicologists cared about.
 
#4
ILIA said:
I suppose it would have been nice to include opus numbers for those bassists that like to think of themselves as scholars of the instrument, but I'm guessing that Zimmerman and the publishers didn't think that bass players, in general, were interested in opus numbers or anything else that only musicologists cared about.
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Certainly, the attitude towards Opus numbers, bowings, and "editorializations" has changed quite a lot since Zimmerman published the majority of his work. I'm hard on the urtext side of things, so the concept of changing the ink on the page is pretty anathema to me, but I know that some people would love to know just how x bassist or y soloist bows their part, and I can see the market for it. But like, editing to make something "more playable", as used to often happen? or adding in dynamic markings that didn't exist? Miss me with that.

Give the player the original and allow them to make their own choices.
 
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#5
eerbrev said:
Certainly, the attitude towards Opus numbers, bowings, and "editorializations" has changed quite a lot since Zimmerman published the majority of his work. I'm hard on the urtext side of things, so the concept of changing the ink on the page is pretty anathema to me, but I know that some people would love to know just how x bassist or y soloist bows their part, and I can see the market for it. But like, editing to make something "more playable", as used to often happen? or adding in dynamic markings that didn't exist? Miss me with that.

Give the player the original and allow them to make their own choices.
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Some of the Zimmerman editions are beginning to serve as a document on how bass players back then were very dependent on someone else for musical decision making. Some groups of bassists back then may have been such a sorry lot, that they needed someone like Zimmerman and his editions to access solo rep. But I'm going to cut them some slack, too. There was no IMSLP or Internet or sheet music databases of peer-reviewed music academic journal or jstor back then, for convenient comparison of editions and everyone's details of interpretation and everyone's analysis of interpretation all out there for everyone to examine. And the whole performer/scholar-urtext-H.I.P. for double bass had not yet evolved into the nice side-stream market that it was to become. Heck, maybe the Zimmerman editions will eventually be used for benchmark bashing, in order to promote new editions of tired classics that need a refreshed edition. "Hey, look. I used an opus number, unlike the oaf that published the edition in standard use."
 
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#7
Jacowherearthou said:
I just discovered His papers are in the library on 5th Avenue in NYC. Going to do some research.
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Yeah, I think there's quite a bit of interesting stuff in there! There's definitely one or two Doctoral Theses worth of material, if people were interested enough.

There's also an early episode of Contrabass Conversations which features a recording of him practicing, I think!

I think there is value in the Zimmerman editions - I think it's critical to make music available to as many people as possible, and Zimmerman managed that in partnership with International Editions. Sankey deserves a lot of credit as well, for the music he arranged for Gary Karr and then later published. I don't think the bass would be anywhere near as advanced today in terms of solo material if it wasn't for those two and International.

We can do better now, and we should do better now, but I won't crack down too hard on the classics, and I don't think I'd ever require a specific edition for a student unless it was on IMSLP or otherwise really affordable and accessible. I will say that once a student reaches a certain stage, I think that giving them the original version and making them choose their own musical decisions (what to cut, what to keep, where to drop an octave, etc etc) is much more critical and useful than giving them an edition I "like."
 

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