Blog Post 6: October 28

The article from Oxford Music online about sources brought up some very good points. The part that interested me the most was when they discussed copies that were sent to the engraver that may have not survived. I can see how this would lead to a major gap in the information we have about a particular piece of music. If all that is available is the autograph manuscript and the modern printed parts then it can be very difficult to determine what is actually correct. In any case I think that the original manuscript should be consulted whenever possible. If nothing else, it can be very helpful in determining what the composer was thinking about when they were writing a particular piece.

I find sketches very interesting, and very exciting to look at when learning a piece of music. For myself, as a performer, they can provide more information than even a full score. It can allow the performer to see exactly what the composer was desiring before they wrote the full piece. This can help with determining style, voicing etc. I think it is interesting that Oxford Music Online mentioned that Beethoven's sketches vary from simple melodies to almost fully completed scores. It would be fascinating to see his works in the various states as he was working on them.

It is no surprise to me that historical editions have become more desired fairly recently. The process of acquiring accurate, and complete historical editions though, I think would be very difficult. I think it is interesting how the approach to publishing these editions has evolved over time, with complete editions being expected more recently. I also found it interesting that when historical editions first became popular one of the things they wanted to do was also to publish consistent editions of popular works. I had never really considered that this would be a problem, but it makes sense given that people could have gotten their hands on an almost complete sketch and published that. I also found it interesting that after 1950 they revisited and republished the works of many major composers. It would be interesting to see how different these publications are from each other.

Urtext seems like a very interesting idea to me. It seems like this would allow someone to see the evolution of a piece of music based on it showing what was edited when. This is not a term, or technique, that I had heard of before. I do think it is interesting how they pointed out that some people argue that the composer didn't care about how the piece was performed because there were multiple versions. I would argue that this is likely not the case. I have never met a composer that was not extremely particular about how their music was played. I think people make this argument simply because composers like Beethoven and Mozart are not here to yell at them when they get things wrong.

The passage about Urtext in the Slonimsky made me laugh. While mostly it is making fun of how much people value urtext, it brought up some very good points. Every composer is different, so how are we to know exactly what they are desiring without being able to ask them ourselves. I think the contrast between Ives and Rimsky-Korsakov summed it up perfectly.

The article on the shelf life of urtext was very cool. For me it just emphasized the need to be able to compare editions of a work all together. This can help a lot with deciphering what a composer actually wrote if their writing is illegible. Even if just a couple of notes are changed in editions of urtext, it can be very important. One of the others things I found interesting was when they mentioned editions or manuscripts that are in private collections and are inaccessible. It seems to me that if you own an autograph manuscript you should let at least a couple scholars look at it so that it can be studied and analyzed. It is probably more complicated than them just not letting people look at the manuscript, but it still seems kinda dumb.

The article on Brahms's "Hungarian Dances" is an excellent example of how one minor detail can completely change how we know or perform a piece. This discovery of his notes changed how a very important passage was being interpreted and played. It is incredible that this information was published over 100 years ago, although incorrectly, and was not discovered until recently. Just another reason as to why our understanding of music is always changing and there are always new editions of urtext.

It was cool to see Struck's instructions for this passage after the discovery of what Brahms wanted. He did an excellent job of presenting what Brahms said about the passage and analyzing how it should be played based on this information, versus how it is normally played. I liked his note at the end about how Brahms should have notated it differently than he did if that is actually how he wanted it played.