Editor's Note: The Krebs Fantasie for oboe and organ is one of the most beautiful works in the oboe's literature. Its background is also rather mysterious; Robert Probasco of the University of Idaho faculty, who contributes to these pages regularly has been researching this work. He hopes to investigate it--and other major works of its period-- during a projected sabbatical leave in 1980.
The following would sum up my observations.
I was curious about the unornamented repetitions of several motifs (m. # 21-22, 30-33, 4546), so I obtained a microfilm of the holograph. But the editor (organist Joh. Nep. David) of the 1942 Breitkopf edition had not changed or added any notes to the original. Editor David had added several performance suggestions -- dynamics, slurs and other articulations, and the Italian dolce and marc. The blockbuster change by the 20th-century editor was transposing the oboe part from g minor to f minor. To be sure, the original part for 2 Clavier e Pedale is in f minor, as is the title. However, anyone who has played with the 2-key Baroque oboe knows that technical problems increase as the number of flats increase. Therefore, two flats (g minor) is an easier key than 4 flats (f minor). In fact, the low d-flat in measure 15 of the transposed edition is virtually impossible on a Baroque oboe.
The recording by George Meerwein (ORYX 1710) transposes both oboe and organ to f-sharp minor.
(The "transposition to f-sharp minor" occurs in the oboe part only to accommodate to the pitch level of the organ used in the recording cited Ed.)