When Günter Henle founded his Urtext publishing house in 1948, the first work in the catalogue was the two volume edition of all of Mozart’s piano sonatas. Even today they still bear our numbers HN 1 and HN 2. Over the years both of the volumes have been revised several times so that the musical text always reflects the latest in scholarly research. The manuscripts have survived for many of Mozart’s sonatas, and for some of his works he made slight changes to the text before printing. For this reason we provide both versions in such cases. The editor’s preface and critical commentary provide detailed information concerning all of the sources and questions regarding the text.
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
