This is a page from the wedding march Fanny Mendelssohn wrote for her own wedding when Felix was unable to attend/get his own there on time. Learning the notes themselves has not been particularly difficult: it's the texture that's really getting to me though. Fanny was trained as a pianist and never actually learned how to play organ. She might have known some of the technical things about it (a few stops, perhaps?) but the way she wrote doesn't show an intimate knowledge of how the instrument works.
I chose this particular page because it has octaves in the left hand and a ton of block chords - typical of piano texture, but very rare in organ texture (particularly German of any era).
I've also chosen this page for "scholarly" reasons. You'll notice that in the second bar in the top system on the fourth beat I have written a giant flat sign in parentheses. There is an A in the alto that I just feel should be an A flat - but it's not notated that way in the score.
Had this been a score by Felix Mendelssohn or Johannes Brahms or Robert Schumann or any other prominent male composer, there would probably be alternate editions and published scholarly opinion on the matter. This is not the case, however, and I am unsure whether to make that decision myself or to just play what's written on the page and not question it. The publisher is this lady out of Pullman, WA whose company publishes music composed by women exclusively.
Obviously, I'll speak more on this during my presentation...but until then, I found this sort of strange and interesting.
