Musikedition 2.0: Das ,Aus‘ für den Edierten Notentext?

Abstract

AbstractThe most severe criticism of the concepts of our monumental complete editions in music comes from the side of the editors themselves: laments about unpleasant compromises, ideas of ‘open’ or ‘loose leaf editions’, the wish to easily reprint editions with corrections and addenda, or the complaint about the lack of transparency in editorial decisions - all these details contribute to the impression that the function of critical editions will change fundamentally when we enter the digital world. The example of the several editions of Beethoven’s 1st Symphony, which are all based on the same authentic source (printed parts) shows that aspects of the production and transmission process which help to understand editorial problems in general are more interesting than the edited texts. Similar problems appear in manuscripts and the broad availability of scanned sources brings out the question if, on the one hand, we will have to differentiate between graphemes which until now have been summed up under the same notion, and whereas on the other hand we perhaps often tend to be more sophisticated in terms of exactness than coevals. Thus the move to digital editions will promote questions about writing processes in general and will strengthen the role of contextual knowledge. At the same time this contributes to a clear shift of interest - the former ‘edited text’ is no longer the main goal of a critical edition.