Klarinet Archive - Posting 000340.txt from 2010/09
From: "Keith Bowen" <keith.bowen@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Collaborative Urtext project
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 13:54:10 -0400
I do have some of the training and skills required and would be interested
in participating.
I think that you ask the questions backwards. The first that I would ask
would be, what piece needs this approach? That is, which piece(s) is
eminently worth playing, and has dubious editions with probably poor
editorial scholarship (or not - it always good to have an edition validated)
or some reason for uncertainty in the edition.
Then one goes about the process of discovering and assessing the sources.
There is a huge number of sources for most pieces: manuscripts, first
printings, performers' parts (especially if annotated by the composer),
documents or anecdotes from people who knew the composer, played the piece
with him/her, composers' letters, even pictures. The first and biggest task
is finding and collecting them, then assessing them critically. You can't
answer the question of what sources are available until you engage with the
research.
A good way to start is always to use the international database on musical
sources, RISM (repertoire internationale des sources musicales).
http://www.themefinder.org/help/rism.html Anyone can purchase this, but it's
fairly expensive. It can be accessed for free at major libraries - I go to
London to use the British Library, it's not subscribed to by my university
library, though in most cases one can get free access to one's own country's
materials online.
In assessing the sources, we could really use community power. Because for
something major these are littered across the world. For an MA assignment I
looked at the sources for Haydn's Harmoniemesse. These turned out to be, as
I recall,
Autograph - in Paris. First page available online - enough to show
differences from the printed edition.
First printed edition (pirated) - a few copies, including London, based on a
manuscript no longer known
Annotated set of parts - I think at Esterhazy still
Modern critical edition which pulled most of the above together - widely
available.
The autograph is essential to produce an Urtext, but sometimes, as in the
above case, performance parts corrected in Haydn's hand are more
authoritative. Sometimes the decision might be to produce different editions
representing different stages of the composer's thought (for example
Schumann 4, original and revision 10 years later).
Traditionally there has been one person investigating and collating all of
the above and making the decisions on what goes in and what doesn't,
sometimes subject to an editorial board. This takes a long time. Dan Leeson
and Neil Zaslaw spent 40 years on the Gran Partitta for NMA, and that's
where a darn good autograph was available. It's an interesting idea to do a
lot of this process collaboratively in an online community such as this.
Issues that I see would need addressing are:
1. Some formal structure for decision making. Who decides whether That Bar
is in or out, and what is the decision process? Does everyone have an equal
vote, irrespective of whether they are a keen helper with, as Peter puts it,
time and interest but no training, or a seriously good musicologist?
2. A process for assessing the assessments. When you ask someone to look up
a document in their local library, because that's where it is, what
standards do you apply to their assessment? Digital images don't do
everything, for example they don't usually show watermarks unless you
photograph it carefully.
3. A means of finding the costs. Libraries often charge significantly for
quality reproductions.
4. A process for setting the priorities for the work, especially under
financial constraints.
Mark's offer to set up the web-based storage, access and controls is
wonderful, and would be a huge contribution.
It's a novel and interesting idea.
Keith Bowen
-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Wakeling [mailto:joseph.wakeling@-----.net]
Sent: 11 September 2010 17:16
To: klarinet@-----.com
Subject: Re: [kl] Collaborative Urtext project
On 09/11/2010 04:26 PM, Peter Gentry wrote:
> Joseph, Such a collaboration is already in place. Why not just join
Mutopia?
Here's why, and it's for the same reason that -- while I immensely value
and respect IMSLP -- I don't think they go far enough in what they are
trying to do.
Mutopia contributions _aren't_ carefully-created scholarly editions.
They are reproductions (using Lilypond) of out-of-copyright scores, with
no particular editorial processes to ensure that the resulting score is
good or free of arbitrary impositions. There are also no meaningful
controls on _what_ score is chosen -- e.g. if you look at their copy of
the Mozart clarinet concerto, it's based on a Breitkopf score from the
late 19th century.
IMSLP has similar problems, except that (unlike Mutopia) they don't
transcribe to Lilypond, they just take direct scans. That may explain
why they are more successful -- it's technically easier to achieve and
you get an exact copy of the score, engraved according to the
professional standards of the time. (On the other hand it means that
what you get isn't editable by others -- it's just a picture on a page.)
IMSLP does provide important documents sometimes -- e.g. the Simrock
first editions of Brahms' clarinet works, facsimiles of Bach manuscript
copies -- but as often as not, the music provided is just whatever
out-of-copyright scores or parts happened to be available, usually from
the 19th century.
So you have no meaningful editorial or scholarly process, no careful
consideration of source material, no critical commentary or remarks on
different readings in different sources ...
I want to see if we can do things a bit differently, which is to prepare
a high-quality scholarly edition in an open, collaborative, community
environment. That means that we have to get appropriate source material
(all the relevant manuscripts, proofs and editions, not just some random
out-of-copyright score); it means carefully identifying the different
readings, making appropriate editorial interventions where necessary,
and surely many other things that I don't yet anticipate because I've
never been through the process of creating a scholarly edition.
Alongside this, I'm curious about whether we can use some interesting
technical tools (Lilypond, version control, possibly others) to
facilitate or extend certain aspects of the preparing-scholarly-edition
process.
I'll certainly be reaching out to Mutopia and IMSLP people as part of
the project, but for the reasons given above I don't want to be bound to
them -- and the kind of expertise needed here is perhaps best found in a
community like this, which includes a number of musicological and
scholarly experts, and which is brought together principally by interest
in the _music_.
Anyway, as a first step, there needs to be a piece for which there is
adequate source material available. Can anyone provide such material,
or suggest where it could be obtained? :-)
Best wishes,
-- Joe
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