These three concertos by Christian Ræhs (1710-1786) in a late Vivaldian style have been beautifully edited and typeset by Christian Mondrup and Mogen Friis. The manuscripts are all in J. D. Berlin’s handwriting.
The editors’ preface:
This score is part of the first modern edition of three concertos for solo violin and strings based on manuscripts kept at the NTNU Library, Trondheim, Norway. The manuscript of this concerto is catalogued as “Gunnerus XM 55”. Only separate parts have been preserved, no scores. Hence the orchestral scores of our modern edition are reconstructions based on the separate parts.
The name of the composer is given as surname only, Sigr. Ræhs (ms. XM 55 and XM 57) / Sing.e Reihs (ms. XM 56). The estimated dating of the manuscripts, ca. 1755-1765, taken into account two names come into consideration, the brothers Morten Ræhs (1702-1766) and Christian Ræhs (1710-1786). Morten Ræhs, town musician in Aarhus, Denmark is known as the composer of several sonatas for flauto traverso and basso continuo (see http://www.kb.dk/elib/noder/raehs/index-en.htm) and was estimated as a highly skilled flute player. His brother, Christian was educated as violin player (he mentioned G. Tartini among his teachers and was employed as violinist at the Danish court and as organ player at the Church of Our Saviour, Copenhagen. The only else know compositions by him are a few dances. Since the three violin concertos are obviously written by a composer with deep knowledge of the solo instrument the editors believe that they are written by Christian Ræhs, see H. Koudal, For borgere og Bønder (For Townsman and Peasant), Copenhagen 2000, p. 498 note 38 and p. 511.
The editors want to thank the NTNU Library for generously providing photo copies of the manuscript and for the permission to publish our modern edition. The scores have been typeset by Christian Mondrup by means of the music notation program MUP (see the Arkkra Enterprises home page http://www.arkkra.com) for the note graphics, the publishing program TEX (see the TEX Users Group home page http://www.tug.org) for frontpages, critical notes etc and the postscript document editing utility Quikscript (see ftp://ftp.adfa.edu.au/pub/postscript/Qs README.html) for collecting and merging MUP- and TEX pages. Our edition is \free” sheet music provided for non-commercial usage meaning that you may download the files for viewing or printing on paper and that you may give printed copies to others. It does not mean, however, that you may sell printed scores nor distribute digital copies of these editions in the given format or any other converted forma without the express consent of the editors.
Christian Mondrup (reccmo@icking-music-archive.org)
Mogens Friis (mogens.friis@mail1.stofanet.dk)