Klarinet Archive - Posting 000235.txt from 2010/10

From: "Dan Leeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Urtext
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2010 13:18:40 -0400

The manuscript should be the primary source for the edition to be called
"Urtext." But there are exceptions, though they are VERY FEW. The other
cases include the one you mention in which something other than the
manuscript might be considered even more authoritative. But here's another
example and it is a real one.

Mozart wrote a string quartet from which a manuscript set of performance
parts were prepared. Then Mozart and several other players (including both
Franz Josef Haydn, Michael Haydn, and Karl Dittersdorf) actually played the
quartet from the manuscript performance parts. And as they played changes
were made, mostly slurs and dynamic markings, to the performance parts. That
set of performance parts is considered very authoritative, and it was from
those parts that the first published edition was prepared. And I suppose
that an edition created from those parts (if they still exist) could be
Urtext, but it is the only such case I know of that can be documented. And
there are problems with this case, too.

For example, were all the changes made by stopping the rehearsal, talking
about the matter, making the corrections that everyone agreed to? OR, did
the second violin happen not to like a slur here or there and changed it
without consultation. How many times did you and I, in the middle of a
rehearsal mark up a part for our own needs. "Look at the conductor here!!,"
we might have written without the composer's authorization, "Don't cover the
oboe."
.

So, if you were hired to produce a new edition of that quartet, I think that
you would need three things: (1) the original manuscript, (2) the set of
manuscript performance parts on which the players (and Mozart would have to
be one of them) made additions and corrections, and (3) the first printed
edition, which was derived from item 2 anyway.

But despite the importance of items 2 and 3, you could not ignore item 1.
Even though 2 and 3 have things in it that may be more definitive, it is
still the manuscript and would have to be consulted.

There are few formal rules involved here, but the original manuscript is
stilt the most important source.

Dan Leeson

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph Wakeling" <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
To: <klarinet@-----.com>
Sent: Monday, October 25, 2010 9:39 AM
Subject: Re: [kl] Urtext

> On 10/25/2010 12:25 AM, Dan Leeson wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Can you clarify what "primarily based on the manuscript" means?
>
> I'm thinking here of cases where the manuscript is arguably not the most
> authoritative source of the composer's final thoughts -- for example,
> where there are large amounts of revisions introduced at the proof stage.
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