Klarinet Archive - Posting 000279.txt from 2006/03

From: Adam Michlin <amichlin@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] K622 orchestral parts
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:03:41 -0500

Having gone through the process many times myself, I can say that
creating an edition of a score and creating clean, accurate and
consistent parts from said score is a significantly non-trivial task.
Non-trivial enough to be an important reason as to why people pay
good money for performing editions of Mozart's long out of copyright
works. I should also add that when you're working from a composer's
manuscript, non-trivial doesn't begin to cover the complications that
can arise.

I particularly bristle at the thought that anyone with Finale or
Sibelius can create performable and especially saleable editions in a
matter of days in a world where so many people think nothing of
photocopying music - "Oh, Mozart doesn't need the money." Yes, Mozart
is dead, but there are people who depend on the sale of extremely
well prepared scores and parts. There are also people who depend on
the sale of not so well prepared scores and parts, but discriminating
consumers are almost always able to do get what they pay for. In
either case, much more than a few days of work us put into the
product for sale.

Short of finding the manuscript to K622 to base a new orchestral
edition upon, I think even a meticulously prepared edition by Dan
Leeson himself would have a hard time making much if any money in a
market where most people in the position to perform K622 with
orchestra already own an orchestral edition which is "good enough"
(which really isn't good at all, but that's an entirely different
issue). International still cranks out old editions of K622 for
clarinet and piano with rather staggering mistakes (not to mention an
edition of K313, the G major flute concerto, with a footnote on the
first page which *still* says "Originally for horn and orchestra"!).
Why do they continue? Because the parts are good enough and people buy them.

Mozart has been open source (figuratively speaking) for quite a time;
neither the problem nor the solution.

As to Urtext versus non-Urtext (forgive my thread jumping), it seems
simple to me. In an old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation,
the android Commander DAY-ta is referred to by a new officer as
DAH-ta. Our android corrects the officer who then replies saying,
"What's the difference?". The difference, as DAY-ta puts it, is that
"one is correct, the other is incorrect.". Urtext K622 is simply incorrect.

-Adam

At 05:12 PM 3/14/2006, Joseph Wakeling wrote:
>Tony Pay wrote:
> > The Baerenreiter parts are handwritten, not particularly
> well. And, the firm
> > is notoriously tardy. (How long did it take for K361 parts to
> appear, Dan?)
> >
>
>Good God. It's not even like it should be *difficult*. They could
>probably pay some music student minimum wage just to knock it all
>together in Finale in a couple of days. Come to think of it they could
>pay *me* minimum wage to knock it all together in Finale in a couple of
>days.
>
>It's time to make Mozart (and others) open source. Get all the stuff in
>the Neue Mozart Ausgabe, convert it to electronic form and release it on
>the web under a Creative Commons license. Then if publishers can't be
>arsed to produce decent material, someone else can. :-)

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