Sibelius op .75 Number 5: is the composer a bit sloppy, is my edition a bit sloppy, or am I missing something

Question

In my edition of this piece, there's very specific (Ped) (*) markings, which suggests to me that the composer is laying out all the pedalling.

However, a bit after the Forte/fermata in the long section without measure bars, he seems to have slacked off, or forgotten a 'simile' -- there are eight arpeggios apparently without lifting the pedal. This seems a bit hard to believe.

Also in this piece, I wonder what musical distinction is to be drawn between a comma and a fermata over a bar line.

Answer 1

Going by the edition posted on IMSLP here, I would consider the phenomena you mention to be an editorial oversight. Possibly, whoever was looking at page 133 expected the pedaling to continue on the next page, and whoever was looking at page 134 assumed someone had already written a 'simile'.

Given how he's written the pedaling everywhere else in the Risoluto section, I would find it very difficult to interpret it otherwise.

As Ben mentioned above, the , would be interpreted as a breath mark by vocalists and wind instrumentalists, so we see them alongside fermatas quite a bit. They occasionally indicate a tiny bit of pause after some rubato, or something like allarg.->,a tempo... If you notice page 134, 2nd system, the preceding arpeggio starts with a note marked tenuto, which could be interpreted similarly.

In this piece, I would consider the , to be more the idea of space, whereas the fermata over a bar line would be actually a bit of space.