NOTATIO

At the bottom of this page, the piano right hand does something, but there is no rhythmic marking to clarify it.

I'm presuming that the right hand is playing 32nd note triplets (first note of each missing)?
Isn't it odd that an edition from this time period would omit a detail of that sort?
I might have expected a triplet making on the first one, then "sim." or something for the rest, to avoid cluttering the score?

EDIT:
Silly me, I just noticed the 32nd note sextuplets at the top of the page...
But again, they aren't marked as tuplets either!

Those were the days when one wouldn't want to insult the intelligence of anyone, because they might challenge you to a duel. But seriously, many composers assumed more musical literacy on the part of the player than today and might or might not indicate tuplets with numbers and slurs when they felt it was obvious.

I believe "simile" came into use later rather than earlier. The way to indicate simile during the 19th century was to start off with a marking, say a series of staccato dots, and then stop in some very unlike place in the passage, leaving the player to draw the inference that they should continue on. In this way, clutter was avoided. Even the clutter of "sim."

Beautiful piece. Faure was a wonderful composer.

Thank-you John.
Now that cannabis is legal almost everywhere I NEVER take the musical literacy nor the musicians' states of mind during rehearsals as a given.
So I tend to over-write in my scores.
After a disastrous reading of a band work where the percussionists came in mid-way through a lovely soft oboe solo.... I was traumatized. They were stoned out of their gourds.



Yes, this piece is absolutely heart-rending.
I'm having some fun getting into my hands (it's a lot easier than I had originally assumed it would be (having only heard the orchestral version) to perform with a violist friend (I know, HERESY!!! "viola! Pshaw!".)

This page is also an excellent example of the importance of proper vertical alignment!

there're a few spots in the sheet music where beams get messed up in the staff lines, and I keep reading the notes wrong because of this.
it's very frustrating because the music itself is NOT difficult to play, but some of the easier passages are just frustrating to read because of this type of issue.
as I memorize the piece I imagine this will no longer be an issue, but for now it's annoying. I'm an excellent sight-reader and this makes rapidly scanning the music as I play almost impossible in spots.

Is this the spot? Looks like the engraver was overly concerned about being authentic to the composer's manuscript. There seems to be plenty of room on the page to have turned the stems up on the highest voice.
Looking through the rest of the piece, and also the composer's manuscript of the orchestral version, the tuplet numbers are actually overdone compared to what would have been used a few decades earlier.

John, no, actually. My edition has all the busy work remaining in the lower staff in that section.
It's actually in the 3rd and 4th measures of the 2nd theme (when it switches to major... the conflicts are at measure 25-30), the down-stem right hand melody, the beams are all smooshed into the spaces in the staff, and the hairpins are so close and conflicting with the left-hand slur...
It's a real jumble.

Maybe you should use the original edition. It's quite clean and easy to read aside from the one measure above. Possibly also a bit more authentic. I don't see a "con grandezza" in the original. Maybe a later addition by the composer? The marking doesn't sound like Faure, though. More like Liszt.

aha, the edition I'm using is an old Schirmer edition, edited by Alwin Schroeder.
Seems to be an edition from 1914.