Catch up!
I prefer your paper editions over Henle, but Henle support for iPad and tablet music is way better. Overall I’m trying to covert from paper to iPad, and finding I’ll have to also switch to Henle editions. I hope someday you can up to Henle in tablet music. I’d rather be using your editions!
Terrible application, thought I could download score
I was under the impression after paying $12 I would have a PDF, not a proprietary architected document in an unusable app. The inability to write with an Apple Pencil to properly notate a score is unacceptable. Having to use the crude tools in this app are a joke. Barenreiter would sell a lot more digital music if they just sold high quality pdfs that could be loaded into leading apps like For score. Will be requesting a refund tomorrow.
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Needs some work
This app is a great idea, especially since Bärenreiter scores are never available on IMSLP.
Great editions of music; awful app
This app is a far cry from the Henle entry into this space, surprising for such an eminent publisher. No performance editions, just study scores; no annotation options, which Henle has polished to a remarkable degree; and their library storage area is crude and unhelpful. Hope they will invest in improving this!
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Work in Progress, half-baked library and not-so-great marking tools for studying
This application seems to be a work in progress; there has only been a few updates to this application in the past few years this has been available.
PROS
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First of all, the organization when you want to view a piece is pretty nice. It’s great to see the prefaces and notes about the piece so readily accessible next to the movements of the pieces, as Barenreiter usually offers great notes about the history of the pieces. The scores themselves look very clean and crisp, and are scaled to fit the screen marvelously. I love the “font” Barenreiter uses for their scores, and they’re really easy to read for musicians. That’s about as much positives as I can say for this application as of this review.
NOT-SO-GOOD
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This application has a very limited selection from the full Barenreiter catalogue, especially since this application has been available for a few years now. The catalogue only offers full scores, and not individual parts, so you will have to order individual parts through sheet music websites (which kind of defeats the purpose of this application; if we have to order individual parts for the scores listed here through other retail websites, we might as well just buy the scores from other websites too!) There are hardly any string quartets, haphazard orchestral selections, and lots of classical music repertoire standards from Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, etc. missing. Repertoire offering by composers seem to be very random as well. For example, Bärenreiter offers the early and middle Beethoven String Quartets, but no late ones such as Op. 127-135. You can find one piano sonata by Beethoven and the first 3 Piano concertos (seriously, why are 4 & 5 missing? They’re so crucial for pianists to study!), but all of his numbered symphonies (no Egmont or Coriolan overtures!) are there. There’s no rhyme or reason to the ones that are absent. In addition, there are no previews for the scores when you are searching the store, so you better pray that you like what you’re buying blindly. Also, you cannot print the score that you have purchased, so do not expect to do so.
Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of A Faun is offered as a demo piece for new users, but I have to ask why such a random piece is offered as a demo (The barenreiter score is notorious for having many critical errors in the score). I can tell you that the majority of musicians who are “studying” at music schools are not conductors, so this demo doesn’t benefit anyone that’s not studying the first few lines of the flute solo in the beginning or the few conductors who are out there. I cannot fathom why Bärenreiter chose this score as their demo for musicians who want to understand why it’s critical to get an urtext edition of a piece they wish to study. Who is the Barenreiter digital library for? Is it for professional conductors or for conservatory chamber musicians? Is it for amateur high school musicians, or concert soloists? Barenreiter needs to rethink what they’re trying to showcase from their library with a score that’s not rife with errors and that caters more to the needs of the audience they are trying to get to purchase scores from here.
NEGATIVES
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Let’s talk about my biggest gripe with this “study” application, the editing. Since the focus on this app seems to be about “studying,” and not for performing, the editing functions are at most, below the bare minimum. You have two selections to mark your scores for studying: a roman numeral button, and a text button. Gee, I wonder how people actually mark their physical scores in real life. The text font is really big and ugly, and you have three choices in colors: red, green, or blue, or RGB. Really? You can’t even choose black. On top of that, you can’t even select the size of the font to fit your needs. At least offer a size selection for the text, if nothing else. Your second choice for marking the scores are these Roman Numeral things. What in the world is this supposed to be for? Not for fingerings, not for locating measure numbers, etc. I can just type I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, so what’s the point of these buttons? I hope that in future updates to this app, there will be the option to “draw” on the scores so that the individual can actually mark their scores the way that helps them study their score.
The Barenreiter score reader does not support bluetooth page turning modules, so do not expect to use your scores in any performance settings (strictly for studying!). Overall, the Barenreiter app is very limited compared to what Henle offers in their application: a vastly more robust catalogue that continues to add scores consistently, great editing tools for marking any bought scores, individual instrument parts in addition to full scores (with an option to turn on-and-off suggested fingerings from world-renowned musicians), and the fact that it makes the users want to abandon paper for a digital screen for convenience of carrying and for ease of access to a great urtext catalogue. This app feels like an after-thought and is half-baked right now.
TL;DR
The Barenreiter app offers a very haphazard and extremely limited score library from their full catalogue. The emphasis on this application is for score-study, but the “study” part of this app has terrible editing and marking features for studying. Very limited functionality and no previews for the store makes this very hard to recommend for musicians that are not already masters of their craft and know exactly what edition of a score they’re looking for. Recommended only for those who want a clean score and nothing else.
PROS
——————————————————————————
First of all, the organization when you want to view a piece is pretty nice. It’s great to see the prefaces and notes about the piece so readily accessible next to the movements of the pieces, as Barenreiter usually offers great notes about the history of the pieces. The scores themselves look very clean and crisp, and are scaled to fit the screen marvelously. I love the “font” Barenreiter uses for their scores, and they’re really easy to read for musicians. That’s about as much positives as I can say for this application as of this review.
NOT-SO-GOOD
——————————————————————————-
This application has a very limited selection from the full Barenreiter catalogue, especially since this application has been available for a few years now. The catalogue only offers full scores, and not individual parts, so you will have to order individual parts through sheet music websites (which kind of defeats the purpose of this application; if we have to order individual parts for the scores listed here through other retail websites, we might as well just buy the scores from other websites too!) There are hardly any string quartets, haphazard orchestral selections, and lots of classical music repertoire standards from Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, etc. missing. Repertoire offering by composers seem to be very random as well. For example, Bärenreiter offers the early and middle Beethoven String Quartets, but no late ones such as Op. 127-135. You can find one piano sonata by Beethoven and the first 3 Piano concertos (seriously, why are 4 & 5 missing? They’re so crucial for pianists to study!), but all of his numbered symphonies (no Egmont or Coriolan overtures!) are there. There’s no rhyme or reason to the ones that are absent. In addition, there are no previews for the scores when you are searching the store, so you better pray that you like what you’re buying blindly. Also, you cannot print the score that you have purchased, so do not expect to do so.
Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of A Faun is offered as a demo piece for new users, but I have to ask why such a random piece is offered as a demo (The barenreiter score is notorious for having many critical errors in the score). I can tell you that the majority of musicians who are “studying” at music schools are not conductors, so this demo doesn’t benefit anyone that’s not studying the first few lines of the flute solo in the beginning or the few conductors who are out there. I cannot fathom why Bärenreiter chose this score as their demo for musicians who want to understand why it’s critical to get an urtext edition of a piece they wish to study. Who is the Barenreiter digital library for? Is it for professional conductors or for conservatory chamber musicians? Is it for amateur high school musicians, or concert soloists? Barenreiter needs to rethink what they’re trying to showcase from their library with a score that’s not rife with errors and that caters more to the needs of the audience they are trying to get to purchase scores from here.
NEGATIVES
———————————————————————————
Let’s talk about my biggest gripe with this “study” application, the editing. Since the focus on this app seems to be about “studying,” and not for performing, the editing functions are at most, below the bare minimum. You have two selections to mark your scores for studying: a roman numeral button, and a text button. Gee, I wonder how people actually mark their physical scores in real life. The text font is really big and ugly, and you have three choices in colors: red, green, or blue, or RGB. Really? You can’t even choose black. On top of that, you can’t even select the size of the font to fit your needs. At least offer a size selection for the text, if nothing else. Your second choice for marking the scores are these Roman Numeral things. What in the world is this supposed to be for? Not for fingerings, not for locating measure numbers, etc. I can just type I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, so what’s the point of these buttons? I hope that in future updates to this app, there will be the option to “draw” on the scores so that the individual can actually mark their scores the way that helps them study their score.
The Barenreiter score reader does not support bluetooth page turning modules, so do not expect to use your scores in any performance settings (strictly for studying!). Overall, the Barenreiter app is very limited compared to what Henle offers in their application: a vastly more robust catalogue that continues to add scores consistently, great editing tools for marking any bought scores, individual instrument parts in addition to full scores (with an option to turn on-and-off suggested fingerings from world-renowned musicians), and the fact that it makes the users want to abandon paper for a digital screen for convenience of carrying and for ease of access to a great urtext catalogue. This app feels like an after-thought and is half-baked right now.
TL;DR
The Barenreiter app offers a very haphazard and extremely limited score library from their full catalogue. The emphasis on this application is for score-study, but the “study” part of this app has terrible editing and marking features for studying. Very limited functionality and no previews for the store makes this very hard to recommend for musicians that are not already masters of their craft and know exactly what edition of a score they’re looking for. Recommended only for those who want a clean score and nothing else.
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