Re: Winterreise

[Simon Albrecht]

Am 12.03.2014 10:28, schrieb Urs Liska:

Am 12.03.2014 10:23, schrieb Jan Warchoł:

2014-03-12 10:17 GMT+01:00 Urs Liska <address@hidden>:

I'd be really interested in such a project, but I have to say that I could
only really consider it if it is sufficiently crowdfunded beforehand. And I
think it would be expensive.

I'd be interested, too!  Actually, at Waltrop 2012 we were thinking about a
Kickstarter campaign, but didn't decide anything then...

And i think that a recording is **very** important from the crowdfunding
point of view, because that's something _anyone_ can "consume", as opposed
to sheet music.  Really, i think that a recording would make success 3
times more likely.

Anyway, we shall see how this campaign turns out, and then what commissions
we may get after the award.  So i've marked the beginning of May as "look
at Winterreise again" :)

Yes, and we can't start such an undertaking as a duo project. To be promising it should be backed by a number of contributors right from the start. And with contributors I don't mean "hired copyists".

Best
Urs 

I’m a bit sceptical about this for two reasons:
– For all the great achievements that have been made in creating lilypond, I think you will all consent that it is still far from reaching the quality level represented by hand-engraving from the end of 19th to the middle of 20th century. An example of this is the Winterreise edition by Max Friedländer on IMSLP (which is of course insatisfactory in textual matters).
– We nowadays go very far in refinement of editorial methods and preparing ever new Urtext editions, which often differ from each other only in details sometimes insignificant for actual music making and for getting the actual meaning of the music. Don’t misunderstand me: there are of course Urtext editions which do in fact shed a new light on the music and provide significant novelties. And if on top of that the typographical quality is acceptable or even nice (yes, it does occur, even without lilypond, in rare cases), I also buy them. But with Bach for example, I think most volumes of the old Bach complete edition maintain a really high scientific standard on top of being beautiful, and they are freely available already, which to me makes the earlier mentioned Open Goldberg/WTC campaign somewhat needless.
To come back on the Winterreise topic, on the above linked IMSLP site there is also the edition by Mandyczewski (also from a Breitkopf & Härtel complete edition), whose editorial work I consider to be level to that of most modern „Urtext” editions. The drawbacks are in this case: there is no medium/low voice edition, and the engraving is very nice, but too airy for my taste and thus also takes more pages than necessary for many pieces, which makes a practical inconvenience for the pianist.
So I do see the possibility of bringing together the best available typographical and scientific quality and make a „Winterreise” edition meeting all needs. However it’s not like there isn’t already a very good edition in the public domain.
(And it’s not a silly idea either to buy the very affordable Urtext edition by Peters, which takes the original, unsurpassed layout of the Friedländer edition and adds changes necessitated by textual revision, and then have it in fine print quality also.)
To conclude this: I’m under the impression that it would be better to focus on less-known music, of which there are no good editions already (like you did with Fried!) and perhaps live with the thought that having to pay for sheet music is perfectly fair and corresponds to the value of the product.
Or I’m simply lacking your musicological proficiency and my estimate about the necessity of a new edition of Schubert’s Winterreise is incorrect? After all, I am judging it more from the artist’s than from the scientist’s point of view.

Best regards,

Simon Albrecht