Publishers’ Editors’ Fingerprints in Sibelius’s Piano Works

Abstract

Printed editions of Sibelius’s piano works typically contain questionable and erroneous details. Some of these result from the intervention of publishers’ editors, who revised the works during the proofreading stage. Sibelius’s publishers needed the editors for copyright reasons: only in revised form could Sibelius’s works obtain copyright protection in the USA. The nature of the revisions varies from the adding of ‘harmless’ details (such as fingerings) to more profound emendations of the note text (such as added dynamics or articulation marks). In any form, publishers’ editors’ intervention corrupts the note text, moving it away from the composer’s original intentions. For the purposes of a critical edition, the interventions must be identified. Surviving autograph manuscripts provide a basis for the identification. However, changes that occurred during the proofreading stage may well originate from the composer himself. If the manuscripts are lost, the identification must be based on knowledge of the composer’s, and the editors’, personal styles. My paper illuminates the role of publishers’ editors in the publishing processes of some of Sibelius’s later piano works, illustrates the changes publishers’ editors made to the scores, and ponders the consequences of these interventions from the viewpoint of critical editing.