New Editions from G. Henle Verlag

G. Henle Verlag has a well-deserved reputation for producing high-quality, authoritative editions of music spanning the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. That reputation has been built, partly, on the marketing of the word “urtext” in relation to its publications. For many musicians, this term can be misleading. It is generally understood that an urtext edition somehow presents a musical text as close as possible to the composer’s original intention. Accor ding to Stanley Boorman, the term is “used to signify a modern edition of earlier music which purports to present the original text, without editorial addition or emendation” (“Urtext,” Grove Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/public/ [accessed 19 August 2009]). This definition becomes considerably more complicated when the task of editing music is at hand. An editor is faced with many decisions, particularly when multiple sources are involved. Even with the luxury of a seemingly error-free autograph manuscript, the idea of the composer’s “original intention” is elusive at best. In music editing, as well as performance, there is only interpretation, and the devil is truly in the details...