Michael Mulcahy’s Bordogni Book

[llama]

I’m thinking about getting Michael Mulcahy’s version of the Bordogni etudes. From what I can tell, they’re very similar to the Rochut version, but there’s very little information out there about them. Do any of you have both versions or know enough about both to explain the differences? I’d prefer to get the Mulcahy version because it’s cheaper and only one book, but if it’s better to get the standard three books then I’ll do that.

[Burgerbob]

Get the Mulcahy. There's a ton of good information inside, some etudes have been changed to more challenging keys (a good thing!) and books 2 and 3 are entirely in tenor/alto clef. It's the definitive version, in my opinion.

And perhaps most importantly, it's spiral bound!

[boneagain]

I second Aidan's motion.

There are some awkward page turns, but that gives an opportunity to pause and think why they might be there. These are studies. They give us material with which to address musical challenges. If I'd had this book when I got my Rochut, I'd have worked more on memorizing.

This is not a trivial point. If not memorizing, I can easily fall into the trap of looking for the next note milliseconds before I play it. That is completely contratry to the intent of Bordogni. The whole idea is to study phrases and the even longer lines they create, and create a musical context for the entire etude. Memorizing is central to this.

So if Mulcahy takes something as simple as a page break and, without a word in his text, turns it into a lesson, imagine what the other commments in the book are like

Final word about Mulcahy's words: he has a favored phrase: "sempre simplice." He does not waste much of anything in his playing and interpretation. Do not expect extensive verbiage in the book. He keeps it simple, using only enough words to make his point, or no words at all, as in the page breaks.

And, yeah, it's spiral bound!!!

[muschem]

I had the Rochut version 20 years ago. When I picked up the horn again recently and started rebuilding my music library, I ran across Mulcahy's version and grabbed a copy. My memory of yesterday is a bit fuzzy, much less 20 years ago, but from what I recall of Rochut, I'd agree that Mulcahy is the superior version for all the reasons already cited. I love the spiral binding - something I do for anything going on my stand if it doesn't already come that way. I like that all 120 vocalises are bound in one book, and Mulcahy's interpretations are fun to play. If you don't already have the keys and tempo comparison that David Schwartz put together, I've found that useful, but Mulcahy also clearly marks the original keys where transcriptions were made: http://www.nyx.net/~dschwart/keystempos.pdf

[Matt K]

The only advantage to the old one is that if you're using it to practice transposition is that the 2nd/3rd volumes are in that clef already which honestly isn't much of a downside as raising those ones by a 5th puts a lot of them in an unreasonably high register.

[llama]

Thank you all for the advice. I will definitely get it now.