Reflections of an American Harpsichordist Unpublished Memoirs, Essays, and Lectures of Ralph Kirkpatrick

152 ❧ chapter fifteen
ultimately into his own sources of inspiration. For this we often have to cross
numerous and formidable barriers of time, language, and culture. There are
also all sorts of sources of information and inspiration around us and within
us on which we have the privilege of calling. I think it is quite impossible to
prescribe or precisely to delimit what may conceivably serve as information or
enlightenment to the performer. The grace that eludes the scholar may well
descend on the conservatory student and vice versa. Anything that may be of
conceivable use is worth pursuing.
In thinking about the pursuit of sources of musical texts, we need to make
a preliminary distinction between the text as the composer has left it and the
text as the composer may have intended it. Some composers are remarkably
precise in their notation and complete in their indications. Others are sketchy,
and their manuscripts are often full of ambiguities and unexecuted sugges-
tions. Sometimes no autograph exists, but only a set of copies that have served
to dilute not only the composer’s text but his intentions.
There are almost as many problems in the pursuit of a musical source
and in its editing as there are different kinds of sources. Many parallels exist
between the techniques of literary editing and those of musical editing. But
there is one signifi cant difference, and that consists in the much greater num-
ber of demands that are made on a musical text in order that it may be easily
and quickly read and performed. What makes a readable literary text is rela-
tively simple, supposing, of course, that one already knows how to read. And
in both literary editing and musical editing, there are enormous variations of
standards, ranging from meticulous scholarship to the crassest kind of popu-
larization. On the whole, I think it can be said that standards of literary editing
in nearly all countries are generally higher than those of musical editing. This
is certainly true in the English-speaking world.
It might be of interest to remind ourselves of some of the standards that
can be applied in editing or in presenting a musical text. They offer vari-
ous degrees of complexity. Obviously, the simplest presentation of the text
is a facsimile or a literal transcription from one source. The harpsichord
pieces of Couperin are a good example of this. They exist only in a primary
printed source. There are no manuscripts and very few variants in succes-
sive printings.
But a further stage of complication is provided when there is more than
one source. It is still fairly simple if a dominant source can be selected which is
merely complemented by secondary sources. Many works of Bach lend them-
selves to this procedure. Sometimes, however, there are several sources, with
so many variants among them that it is neither possible to cite them all in the
main text nor to achieve a composite reading that cannot be accused of arbi-
trariness. In most such cases, it still is best to choose the most plausible text and
relegate all but the essential variants to the text revision. The recent edition of
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