Klarinet Archive - Posting 000258.txt from 2006/03

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] K622 orchestral parts
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 14:01:08 -0500

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dnleeson wrote:
> More from Leeson: I had dinner with the president of Henle in
> Salzburg a few months ago, and I asked him why the new edition of
> 622 is stated to be "Urtext." We both know that the term does
> not apply unless the material derives from the manuscript. It
> happens to be a very intelligent and thoughtful edition, BUT IT
> IS NOT URTEXT. I gave a talk on that subject in Bloomington. It
> was entitled, "Abandon ye all hope of ever getting an authentic
> edition of K. 622."
> =20

Ohoho, this opens up a good ol' can o' worms, or at least a discussion
you and I have had on-off on a few occasions and never really finished.=20
Well, I think *you* finished, but I never got around to responding to
your last email on the subject.

I think you thought I was trying to contest the definition of Urtext but
that wasn't my point. Your description of what Urtext means is great.=20
But what is pretty obvious, and what I was trying to get at in the
previous discussion, was that publishers don't follow that definition
when it comes to describing their editions as "Urtext".

I think there's a straightforward element of marketing involved in that,
but they also must have to justify it to themselves. IMO when a
publisher talks about "Urtext" or an "Urtext edition" they are talking
fundamentally about the method of scholarship used to derive the
edition, and not the precise nature of the sources. It clashes with the
traditional definition of "Urtext" but their use of it is logically
self-consistent---"the result of the best possible scholarly research to
reconstruct the composer's text" might be a very brief way of putting it.=

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