Klarinet Archive - Posting 000226.txt from 2010/10

From: "Dan Leeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Urtext
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2010 22:53:44 -0400

It is called "an edition." Nothing more.

Dan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jennifer Jones" <helen.jennifer@-----.com>
To: "The Klarinet Mailing List" <klarinet@-----.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 24, 2010 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: [kl] Urtext

So, what do you call the non urtext versions that catch on? Kenny G?
(Please correct me if I have constructed a bad metaphor)

On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 3:25 PM, Dan Leeson <dnleeson@-----.net> wrote:
> I waited until the discussion of URTEXT editions settled down, but now I'd
> like to comment on the matter.
>
>
>
> The term "Urtext" is derived from the city of UR, thought to refer to a
> city in ancient Sumer, today Iraq. The general idea is that Ur was the
> place where everything, including civilization, began. And so, Urtext,
> from the musicological point of view, means the text based on the original
> manuscript.
>
>
>
> If the edition is not based primarily on the manuscript, it is not Urtext,
> even though it may be well thought out and intelligently done. Basing the
> edition on an early printing is not sufficient to claim that the new
> edition is Urtext. It may be an excellent edition in that a thoughtful
> editor has spent considerable time thinking about what has to be done, but
> it is NOT Urtext.
>
>
>
> Thus, there can be no Urtext edition of the Mozart clarinet concerto or
> the quintet for clarinet and strings, even though some very well thought
> out editions of those works are incorrectly advertised as such.
>
>
>
> Another layer of complexity is that an editor has a very big say about
> what the original manuscript says. No autograph is so clean that there are
> no problems in preparing an Urtext edition. Every autograph has its own
> problems and the editor is the authority in terms of what the composer
> meant whenever an ambiguous passage arises. One hears an editor say, "I
> know what the composer said, but I don't know what he meant."
>
>
>
> The finished product is a combination of (1) the manuscript, (2) other
> sources in which the composer may have shed light on that same composition
> (including music other manuscripts and even letters), and editorial
> changes and interpretations made (with the best of intentions) by an
> editor who may or may not be qualified to interpret the sources at his
> disposal. For example, there were editors in the early part of the 20th
> century who asserted that Mozart did not know anything about the lower
> range of the clarinet, because he called for notes below low written e.
>
>
>
> And to complicate the matter even further, there may be an extant
> manuscript of a work, but it is unavailable at the time the first edition
> is prepared (from a set of performance parts, for example). So the first
> edition takes on a patina that it may not deserve. Then, at some later
> time, the manuscript surfaces, but what happens is that players have
> become used to the piece in the first edition. And what this means is that
> performers will reject changes based on the manuscript because they
> differs from what it is they are used to.
>
>
>
> The most egregious example of that phenomenon is the gran Partitta, with
> musicians rejecting an edition based on the autograph because it presents
> material that contradicts the first edition in notes, rhythms, content,
> resolution of abbreviations, etc.
>
>
>
> I gave a lecture on this matter at U. of Indiana, and it was entitled,
> "Abandon ye all hope of ever getting an Urtext of K. 622."
>
>
>
> Dan Leeson
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