back | 1 of 3 | more

Pro­fes­sor Hans-Günter Ot­ten­berg – Hold­er of the chair in mu­si­col­o­gy at the In­sti­tute of Art Re­search and Mu­si­col­o­gy, Dres­den Uni­ver­si­ty of Technology

Alex­an­der Plötz over­saw my pub­li­ca­tion Five Bas­soon Con­certos Ac­cord­ing to Dres­den Tra­di­tion eve­ry step of the way, from its in­i­ti­al ru­di­men­ta­ry stag­es to its full read­i­ness for print and in­ter­net pub­li­ca­tion. The ex­tra­or­di­na­ri­ly pains­tak­ing la­bours in­volved, in­clud­ing a mul­ti­tude of is­sues en­com­pass­ing ty­po­graphy, edi­to­ri­al meth­od, crit­i­cal a­naly­sis of sources, his­tor­i­cal tra­di­tion in gen­er­al and mu­si­cal tra­di­tion in par­ti­cu­lar, were car­ri­ed out su­perb­ly and in con­stant cor­re­spon­dence with me by Mr. Plötz, whose en­deav­ours bore fruit in a co­her­ent mu­si­cal text com­ply­ing with high stan­dards of scien­ti­fic and mu­si­cal prac­tice. I should like to make es­pe­cial men­tion of his me­tic­u­lous work meth­ods, which see im­por­tance placed even on what are seem­ing­ly the most in­con­se­quen­tial de­tails, while main­tain­ing a con­stant fo­cus on the re­quire­ments of the edi­tion as a whole. Over the course of ex­ten­sive te­le­phone con­fer­ences be­tween me and Mr. Plötz, the two of us were able to set­tle on the best pos­si­ble for­mat for pub­lication – optimal siz­es for fonts and notes, the pro­per po­si­tion­ing of fig­ured bass no­ta­tion, rules for the no­ta­tion of ac­ci­den­tals and much more – with the en­tire un­der­tak­ing be­ing char­ac­ter­ized by a high de­gree of ef­fi­cien­cy and an em­i­nent­ly pleas­ant atmosphere.