Editionsrichtlinien Musik (review)

Editionsrichtlinien Musik. Edited by Bernhard R. Appel and Joachim Veit. (Musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten, 30.) Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2000. [x, 428 p. ISBN 3-7618-1487-9. DM 48.]

The present volume constitutes the fourth in a series of related publications on major editorial projects undertaken mostly in Germany. Its nearest parent is the volume edited by Georg von Dadelsen in the same series (vol. 22) under the title Editionsrichtlinien musikalischer Denkmäler und Gesamtausgaben (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1967). Six of the seven editorial guidelines published there are reproduced (all but that of the Mozart edition in updated form) in the current volume. Important supplementary information and progress reports on these and several other collected editions have already appeared in Musikalisches Erbe und Gegenwart: Musiker-Gesamtausg. in d. Bundesrepublik Deutschland (ed. Hanspeter Bennwitz et al. [Kassel: Bärenteiter, 1975]). And a more distant relative is the volume of essays on discrete repertories (as opposed to editorial projects already underway) edited by Thrasybulos G. Georgiades, Musikalische Edition im Wandel des historischen Bewußtseins (Musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten, 23 [Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1971]). This volume, then, continues a distinguished tradition of reporting on current editorial thinking in several of the most important ongoing
projects.

Many readers will be grateful to have at hand, in a single convenient volume, the latest guidelines of twenty of the most important editorial undertakings. Nevertheless, I must express concern at the volume's distressingly parochial tone, which is announced on the back cover, continues in the foreword, and is comfirmed by the choice of the guidelines reproduced. The back cover states that the volume presents "representative documentation of the historico-critical music editions currently underway in the Federal Republic of Germany" and, further, that the book provides "insights into the working methods of the most important musicological institutes for editing in Germany" (my trans.). One might expect such a bias in a publication emanating from the national musicological society of Germany; the American Musicological Society, for example, sponsors the series Music of the United States of America, and frequently reports on it in its official publications. But the current volume ignores, to a considerable degree, the larger intellectual context in which these projects now take place.

Eighteen of the guidelines published concern projects housed in German institutes, and the projects largely edit music produced in German-speaking nations by composers born in those countries. Although several of these composers had careers elsewhere(e.g., Christoph Willibald Gluck and Paul Hindemith), only one of the sixteen included in this group, Orlando di Lasso, was born in a non-German-speaking country. In these surroundings, the inclusion of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Kurt Weill (the latter, of course, also German-born), whose editorial projects are based in France and the United States, respectively, seems tokenism. If there is room for Giacomo Meyerbeer in such a volume, why not Giuseppe Verdi, whose collected edition resides at the University of Chicago in collaboration with Ricordi? Incidentally, the editorial teams of both the Lully and the Weill projects include important German contributors.

One might always quibble about the choice of editorial projects, and perhaps some of those not represented here were unable or unwilling to provide their guidelines. But there can be no mistaking the tenor of the editors' foreword. First, it makes no attempt to continue the tradition, established in the volumes cited above edited by Dadelsen and Bennwitz, of offering critical remarks on the historiography of editing; Dadelsen himself, and Ludwig Finscher, one of Bennwitz's editorial colleagues, presented important introductory essays that constitute defining statements about the field.

Second, it barely acknowledges the burgeoning critical discourse on music editing that has arisen since the publication of Dadelsen's volume in 1967. The only works cited in the foreword are German publications since 1989. Earlier German writings overlooked include the volumes noted above edited by Georgiades and Bennwitz, the Festschrift for Günter Henle (Musik, Edition, Interpretation: Gedenkschrift Günter Henle, ed. Martin Bente [Munich: Henle, 1980]), Georg Feder's seminal study (Musikphilologie: Eine Einführung in die musikalische...