Editorial Challenges in the Early Songs of Gabriel Fauré

Between 1869 and 1879 the Paris publisher Antoine Choudens issued twenty songs by the young composer Gabriel Fauré. These songs, the well-known "first collection" (they were published in volume form in 1879), include such gems as Après un rêve, Ici-bas, and the ever-fresh Le papillon et la fleur. In their chaotic array of manuscript and published sources, dating from the early 1860s to as late as 1908, they also pose numerous documentary and practical challenges for the scholar and the editor. Manuscript sources are traced for only half of the twenty songs, and not one of those served as engraver's copy: rather, they offer a mixture of drafts, early fair copies, presentation manuscripts and non-autograph copies. Printed sources for the songs meanwhile involve several different publishers, numerous editions, and multiple keys, creating a highly complex cocktail of variants. A dearth of documentation concerning the composition and early performances of the songs makes it unusually difficult even to establish such editorial starting points as reliable chronology and "original" keys. The present article complements and reflects the preparation of a new critical edition of Fauré's early songs, commissioned by Peters Edition, London. It explores the songs' idiosyncratic editorial challenges relative to contemporary norms of critical editing, proposes an editorial methodology that blends the scholarly with the practical, and considers the role of a critical edition in addressing performance practice and a reappraisal of the repertoire.