“Clean” Version: Explication

In the “Clean” Performance (or Concert) Version of sheet-music on this website, the notes and layout are identical to the “Edited” Performance  Version but all bowings, fingerings and other editorial suggestions have been eliminated. Sometimes – often even – the composer’s slurs, bowings, dynamics and expressive markings have also been eliminated from the “Clean” version in order to give the greatest interpretative freedom to the player. The “Clean” Version is thus basically a skeleton, that we can dress exactly as we want to, spontaneously in performance, or carefully prepared well in advance.

Normally both the “Literal Transcriptions”, as well the cello parts in the accompaniment scores, will have all of the composer’s original indications. Referring to these will allow us to make informed choices about which suggestions we want to observe and which we prefer to ignore.

In the “Edited Performance Versions”, chords are usually written out as played, which means they are written “spread”. How exactly we spread our chords is however an editorial decision and the “Clean” editions should probably not include these spread chords. Unfortunately, this realisation came a little late, which is especially unfortunate for some of the very chordal movements in unaccompanied Bach. With time, this should be corrected, but in the meantime …… my apologies.