Editorial Remarks 1.01

Typesetting the sonatas composed by Johan Helmich Roman I used a copy of the original manuscript which is owned by the Statens musikbibliotek - The Music Library of Sweden in Stockholm. I followed the original as close as possible except the setting of accidentals where I translated Roman's practice to the modern convention. In a few cases I changed the distribution of the voices on the staves and the direction of stems. A few quite obvious mistakes occur in the original which I corrected.

Now I present all 12 sonatas execept sonata 4 which is typeset by Johan Tufvesson http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg/rcmblste with Roman's method setting accidentals. The first two sonatas are typeset using MusiXTeX all others using PMX. You will find PDF-files (a4 format), MIDI-files and the sources.

Roman used trills and appoggiaturas for ornamentation. Trills are marked by a sign which can be read as the letter tr and beginning with sonata 9 by the letter t. I use the sign for trills as in modern editions. Appoggiaturas are normally indicated by small quavers although in a few cases small minims and crotchets can be found. If they are played as long or short appoggiatura must be decided from the musical context. In most cases this should be no problem.

For those people who want to gain an impression of Roman's sonatas there is an excellent performance by Eva Nordenfelt (CD SCD 1060/1061, Swedish Society DISCOFIL) playing a harpsichord made by R. von Nagel after an instrument of Blanchet (1730).

A few movements have no names. In these cases I chose enclosed in braces those names given by Eva Nordenfelt on the above mentioned CD.

For any comments please contact: hermann.hinsch@urz.uni-heidelberg.de