Review

Marco Bordogni
Melodious Etudes for Trombone: Selected from the Vocalises of Marco Bordogni, Book 2

Arranged by Joannes Rochut. Edited by Alan Raph.


New York, NY, United States
Publisher: Carl Fischer
Date of Publication: 2013
URL: http://www.carlfischer.com

Primary Genre: Study Material - etude

With Book 2, Carl Fischer continues the “extreme makeover” of the iconic Bordogni Vocalises that were arranged by Joannès Rochut (1881-1952). As with Book 1 (reviewed by Tim Howe in ITA Journal, Vol. 42, No. 1, Winter 2014) this revision corrects various errors that were in the original 1928 publication, and is enhanced with a CD that contains PDF files with music and play-a-long audio files of the original piano accompaniments. Unfortunately, the editorial approach of Carl Fischer and editor Alan Raph has erased so much of Rochut’s contribution that to still call this series, “The Rochut Book,” is rather a stretch.

Joannès Rochut (his name is spelled incorrectly in this new edition) was principal trombone of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1925-1930, and it was while in Boston that his three volumes of Vocalises by Bordogni were published for trombone. Rochut was not the first player to apply these bel canto studies for voice to the trombone; his countryman Eugene Adam (who preceded Rochut in the Boston Symphony by several years) was using Bordogni’s studies in a French edition at least as early as 1910s. But we can thank Rochut for working with Carl Fischer to commit these excellent Vocalises to print, specifically edited for trombone players with ornaments simplified, judicious breath marks inserted, and phrasings made idiomatic for the instrument.

Given the fact that Rochut’s edition has been in print for nearly 90 years and is a staple of virtually every trombone player’s practice library, one could have hoped that Carl Fischer would have used the opportunity to reprint the Melodious Etudes to create an “Urtext” – a critical edition – preserving Rochut’s editing while correcting patent errors, adding measure numbers (a useful feature of this new publication), and clearly indicating the addition of newly suggested editorial marks. There are many editions of the Vocalises arranged for trombone that closely conform to Bordogni’s original – publications by Sluchin, Mulcahy, and Schwartz come to mind. It is therefore disappointing that Fischer felt the need to go down the same road, thereby eliminating many of Rochut’s intentional changes to Bordogni’s musical text and discarding much of his careful editing. Etude 61, for instance, has no fewer than 29 changes.

This new edition also suffers from a clunky, amateurish layout that has none of the elegance of the 1928 edition. Apart from making a few adjustments to better facilitate page turns, it would have been very easy for Carl Fischer to keep most of the original look and feel of the Melodious Etudes as we have come to know and love them. Instead, we get awkward spacing such as in the last two lines of Etude 62 that is unfortunately so common in the impersonal computer-layout publishing world. Gone is Rochut’s Foreword to the book, and the newly stated desire to, “[rephrase some passages] to better suit current trombone capabilities,” is unevenly applied.

What we have now is an edition of 30 of Bordogni’s Vocalises sensibly edited by Alan Raph. But to keep Rochut’s name on this new edition does a disservice to the legacy and memory of the great Frenchman, and we must look at this new publication as a missed opportunity, an over-reach, and a reason to hold on to your 1928 edition of, “The Rochut Book.”

-Douglas Yeo
Arizona State University