Preludes Op. 28, Op. 45 (review)

At a time when the concept of the closed 'work' has lost its forcefulness, editions of music should be both rigorous and flexible: rigorous because they still need to be the result of careful analysis of all the available sources and to evaluate their significance in the process of composition and publication, and furthermore they have to allow scholarly comparison while presenting the correct image of the work at a precise historical moment; flexible because they should allow performers to make their own judgements about the aspects of the pieces that they want to consider for performance. This dual demand is particularly true in the case of a new edition of Chopin's music. It is well known that variants form an integral part of his compositions and publication practice to the extent that, as the editors of The Complete Chopin—A New Critical Edition in their 'Notes on Editorial Method and Practice' acknowledge, 'there can be no definitive version of Chopin's works' and that the general principle is that 'a conflation of readings from several sources—in effect producing a version of the music that never really existed—should be avoided' (p. 61). Consequently, the editors—John Rink, Jim Samson, and Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger—have identified a single principal source for each work, and prepared the edition from that source. The factors that guided them in their decisions are worth quoting in full:

• Chopin's presence in Paris, which allowed him to correct proof sheets and successive impressions of the French first edition, whereas he had no control over the publication process in Germany and England. We therefore tend to privilege the French first edition and later printings thereof;
• the existence of an autograph or authoritative copy related to a particular first edition; and
• the quality of the source with respect to errors and clarity of presentation.

(loc. cit.)

The edition, however, far from attempting to reproduce unattainable definitive texts, represents Chopin's works at a specific stage, such as the Stichvorlage or a particular first edition; yet, given the importance of the variants from other authorized texts, these alternatives are then reproduced either next to the main text—where they are clearly distinguished with round brackets, as in the cases of different dynamics, articulation, and alternative pedalling—or in footnotes. Their provenance is thoroughly discussed in the Critical Commentary. Scholarly comparison is thus facilitated, and performers can easily choose the aspects they want to include in their performances, in effect creating their own performing editions: indeed, as stated in the 'Notes on editorial method and practice', 'conflation may be inadmissible for the editor, but it remains an option and right for the performer' (loc. cit.).

The first volume of this new editorial enterprise is a very fine edition of the twenty-four Preludes Op. 28 and the single Prelude Op. 45, which clearly meets the criteria of rigour and flexibility. After listing the numerous extant sources of the Preludes Op. 28—eighteen in total, ranging from the autograph, finished before 22 January 1839 and used as Stichvorlage for the first French edition and its corrected reprint, to the copy of the reprint of the French edition owned by Scherbatoff with some autograph annotations by Chopin—the editor, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, discusses their suggested filiation and comes to the conclusion that the autograph Stichvorlage—indicated as A²—is the best source overall and can be used as the principal source of the edition. In fact all the sources relate in one way or another to it: the French first edition, F¹, and the corrected reprint, F², were engraved on its basis; the English first edition was based on F², but the origin of its fingering 'remains a matter for conjecture' (p. 63); the German edition was prepared on the basis of a copy of A...