This is a new printing of the original edition on sturdy 80 pound acid-free
paper. 8 pages. All markings are original. This Christmas pastorale
for organ, Opus 56, has been popular among organists for a very long time.
Highest quality guaranteed. Size of music is
12.5" x 9.5". $7.00.
Gustav Adolf Merkel (1827-1885) is known for his nine organ sonatas
and his conservative counterpoint which served as the foundation for most of
America’s first generation of organists who traveled to study in Germany.
This wonderful little Christmas piece has been
popular over the years, in part, because it sounds like Christmas music without
containing any recognizable Christmas tunes. Moderately easy. (For another
original Christmas piece, see
Grande
Offertoire de Noël.)
This popularity is reflected
in the number of scanned versions available for download and photocopies
of photocopies passed around, mostly shrunk in size to fit the paper and
of poor quality and bad condition. While at first it would seem counterintuitive
to produce a full-size restoration of music that is so easily available for
free, at least to those with computers, internet connections, and printers,
you may make the decision of which you would prefer to use through a comparison
of four PDFs below:
Original from 1872 |
|
Background reduces contrast and clarity of music,
size of page shrunk, lack of detail, digital artifacts |
Arranged & edited from 1905 |
|
Arrangement engraved in portrait mode, no title
page, original German removed, registration altered, clefs and hand
assignments changed |
Arranged & edited from 1905, modified again
in 2007 |
|
Same as above but all indication of Goss-Custard’s
arrangement removed, no indication of a publisher at all, badly rotated
and skewed |
Restored from 2010 |
|
Restored to the original size and quality. Note the detail of the
engraver’s art on the cover and the clarity of the music on page
one. All of the original publisher information is legible as is the
original German manual instruction and registration. Be sure to
zoom in to see the extent of the detail. |
