De vita cum imperfectis

Abstract

De vita cum imperfectis Alfred Dürr Translated by Traute M. Marshall (bio) The creation of new editions of old music, an important area of musicology, usually has two goals: to enrich our understanding of history and, at the same time, to provide present musical practice with new material—a goal to which the overused notion of the "unjustly forgotten master" bears eloquent (and dubious) witness. The editorial method employed assumes the incontrovertible high quality of the work to be edited; the original, as conceived by the master, is deemed flawless. From this it follows that all the errors contained in the work as it has come down to us are due to flawed transmission and therefore have to be emended in the new edition. Similarly, all additions made to the work by another hand in the course of transmission do not measure up to the level of the master; therefore, they too have to go. This attitude leads to the ideal of the Urtextausgabe, the edition of the original text. And even though the term in recent decades has been interpreted in a considerable number of different ways, it still implies that the new edition must focus as much as possible on the evidence of the composer, and that foreign interpretation of any kind is to be excluded. There is no need to challenge the general validity of these principles. Whoever follows them, however (in the conviction that clarification of the composer's intent is demanded by the commitment to truth, without which our discipline makes no sense), must also become aware of the method's limits in order to use it effectively. The following observations will consider some of those limits. A work like Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion, which the author is currently [1971] editing, is well suited to clarify the problems, since there is no question about the quality of the work or the capabilities of the composer. Therefore, we will be able to focus exclusively on editorial problems. [End Page 212] First of all, we must address the following question: to what extent should the notational appearance of the autograph score be preserved? Whenever the fair copy of a composer is the topic, the autograph Mus. ms. Bach P25 in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek must not be, and cannot be, overlooked. All scholars agree that the idiosyncrasies of Bach's notational handwriting reveal to the eye—as well as to the inner ear—essential features of Bach's music. For that reason, every editor will strive to deviate from this visual representation as little as possible. Max Schneider, in his new edition, met this obligation in exemplary fashion.1 Therefore, the result reveals the problem of the method with particular clarity. Bach, for example, combines the two continuo staves of the first of the two choral movements, "Laß ihn kreuzigen," onto one staff (the lowest) for four and a half measures (folio 54r of the score): there was no space available for the normal separation. On folio 54v, on the other hand, there was sufficient space, and each chorus is given its own continuo staff for the remaining four measures of the movement. The same situation recurs in the second choral movement of the same text: on folio 56v it had to be notated on one staff for five and a half measures, but there was enough space on folio 57r to separate the continuo parts onto two staves for the remainder of the movement. Schneider notates both movements with just one continuo staff throughout (as the lowest staff), thus turning Bach's stopgap measure, necessitated by lack of space, into the governing rule. But when this rule is applied, should it then not be necessary to reproduce visually the lack of space in a new edition, so that the user can understand the rationale of the score layout? Would it not be more important to clarify what caused the composer to proceed in this particular way than to copy slavishly the mere appearance of the score? But is the lack of space the composer faced worthy to be enshrined in a new edition? A blind trust in authority ("he must have known why...