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| From: | ul |
| Subject: | Re: Winterreise |
| Date: | Wed, 12 Mar 2014 16:01:52 +0100 |
| User-agent: | Internet Messaging Program (IMP) H5 (6.0.4) |
Zitat von Simon Albrecht <address@hidden>:
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 couldonly really consider it if it is sufficiently crowdfunded beforehand. And Ithink 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 UrsI’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 <http://imslp.org/wiki/Winterreise,_D.911_%28Schubert,_Franz%29> (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 <http://imslp.org/wiki/Bach-Gesellschaft_Ausgabe_%28Bach,_Johann_Sebastian%29> 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.
Hm, there _are_ some points to what you say. But I'd say that in the case of Winterreise there _are_ significant aspects that aren't completely clear yet. Maybe the open questions wouldn't warrant a new commercial printed edition, but perhaps exactly a more volatile digital edition. There are questions in the Winterreise that can't ever be finally decided, but the editor of a printed edition _has_ to make definitive decisions. This is something a digital edition can try to deal with better - even when the final medium will still be a printout on paper.
As said I don't have the time to go into detail currently, but just a few hints:
There hasn't been _any_ edition so far that printed the songs in the "original" keys, _all_ editions take the keys of the first publication. Five songs, however, had originally been composed in different keys, and it can very well be argued that with two of them (no. 22 and 24) the original keys represent Schuberts poetic idea while the printed keys are trivializations by the publisher. Elmar Budde (the editor of the new Peters edition) knows about this and favors this solution, but in the end he prints (was forced to print) the usual version. The choice between the two versions really sheds a completely different light on the interpretation of the cycle as a whole, so it really _is_ an issue. As is the choice of keys in general. As long as there are performances and even recordings of the Winterreise with inconsistent transpositions there is the need for better performance material, that is: editions for lower voice with consistent transpositions (currently there is only one available). The key progression between two songs in a cycle is (at least for Schubert) an explicit narrative technique. When after the c minor of "Erstarrung" (no. 4) the "Lindenbaum" starts off in aetheric e major we have a transition to a completely new world. When a baritone performing from the medium voice version of Friedländer's edition reduces this transition to a minor->E major I consider this a disgusting trivialization.
Another aspect: The manuscripts of the Winterreise are of _very_ different shape. Some are draft manuscripts with numerous corrections, some of them are so unreadable that Schubert himself decided to write them anew. The second part of the cycle is a fair copy prepared for the engraver. But such fair copies often just omit redundant information (e.g. usually Schubert doesn't repeat keys and clefs for consecutive systems). In a few cases I suspect (and in one extreme case I'm sure) that Schubert really used a "shorthand" notation, expecting the engraver to expand the "macros". Unfortunately it's not clear to what extent Schubert could watch over the edition (of part II) and do proof-reading because he died in the meantime. So there is at least one song where we potentially have a song that is known in a completely leveled version. In "Letzte Hoffnung" I'm convinced that Schubert did something near to a systematic permutation of metric disturbances through accents. This is very much in line with the content and the poetic image of leaves falling down and spookily dancing in the wind. But OTOH it can't finally be proven. But what's worse, nobody has noticed so far. (I know this sounds presumptuous, but there _are_ occasions where you can claim that all the Mandyczewskys, Friedländers, Buddes and Dürrs missed important things. In this case it's the discrepancy between a scrupulously careful handwriting and a strikingly fragmentary content.)
But I'm already getting way too long again ... it's one of these topics you shouldn't poke me about ;-)
Best Urs
Best regards, Simon Albrecht
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