I teach an online music theory and composition course, and I’ve recently started using your Piano Practical Editions in class. Today, I gave an impromptu analysis of Debussy’s Des Pas sur la Neige (Centenary Edition, 2018), and I wanted to thank you — your edition made an enormous difference.
The clarity of the layout made the piece’s harmonic structure immediately visible. My students could easily see how the contrasting sections (D minor vs. Eb minor) supported and reharmonized the primary sonority. Your flexible staff system — temporarily dropping or adding staves as needed — highlighted registral and voice-leading changes in a way that standard editions often obscure.
What really struck me was how the visual design resembled the spirit of a Schenkerian graph. While there’s no reduction of notes, the visual simplification functions similarly: it clears away clutter and guides the eye toward deeper structural relationships.
I also appreciated how your engraving avoids the usual “four-bars-per-line, five-lines-per-page” box format. Instead, the systems feel like organic musical phrases — grouped by logic, not by page geometry. This subtle shift made it dramatically easier for my students (and for me) to analyze the music in real time. I’ve realized that I actually prefer reading multiple ledger lines on a single staff rather than using a bulky grand staff—even though bass clef comes naturally to me—perhaps because it keeps my eyes moving laterally across the page.
If you’re open to it, I’d love to have your blessing to continue using your editions in my class when available. They’ve proven to be an invaluable tool for both performance insight and theoretical analysis.
Thank you again for such thoughtful and elegant work.
Steve Steele
12 July 2025
PIANO PRACTICAL EDITIONS 