G. Henle Publishers stands for Urtext sheet music of the highest quality. The Urtext editions not only provide the undistorted and authoritative musical text but are also aesthetically pleasing, optimised for practical use and extremely durable. And then there is the strong, distinctive blue profile: (almost) all of the Urtext editions are bound in the characteristic blue cardboard.
Musicians trust Henle's blue Urtext editions because they:
- provide an undistorted, reliable and authoritative musical text
- offer superb, aesthetically appealing music engraving
- are optimised for practical use (page turns, fingerings)
- are of high quality and durable (cover, paper, binding)
- contain a short preface that introduces the work (particularly useful for AMEB exams) in German, English and French, as well as explanatory footnotes for particularly interesting passages in the score
- contain a description of the sources, an evaluation of the sources, readings and a documentation of the corrections made (= "Critical Report") in German and English, and often also in French
Absolutely everyone knows this ragtime! As part of the film score for the crime caper “The Sting”, “The Entertainer” became world-famous and set off a veritable Joplin renaissance in the 1970s. American pianist, conductor and musicologist Joshua Rifkin also played a significant role in this with his album “Piano Rags”. It is therefore hard to imagine a more suitable editor than Rifkin for the first critical Urtext edition of Scott Joplin’s piano music, which as a significant contribution to American music history finds its rightful placein the Henle catalogue. This practical and affordable individual edition of “The Entertainer” – an effective ragtime of medium difficulty – offers a small foretaste of the volume containing all of Joplin’s piano works.
