the performer’s pilgrimage to the sources ❧ 155
In the face of this wide range of possible editorial procedures, my own view
of standards of musical editing is frankly rather puritanical. It applies only to
music edited for the literate or potentially literate musician. It seems to me that
the immense job of dealing with musical illiteracy is not the editor’s concern.
This is best undertaken elsewhere. It seems to me that the ideal edition is one
which comes from a text as close as possible to the composer’s own and which
has a minimum of editorial intervention. Naturally this minimum is determined
by the amount that is made necessary by the text itself. Ideally, as an editor one
would make alterations or additions to a text only in such a fashion as would
be entirely indisputable. But this is not always possible. There are many obliga-
tory editorial additions that are inevitably subjective, such as the accidentals of
musica fi cta, the supplementing of ornaments, the correcting of mistakes, the
supplying of ties where they appear to be missing, and so forth. In all such cases
it is the editor’s duty to make clear that any intervention is his and not part of the
original text. At all times one should be able to see at a glance what is original
and what is added. There is no way of setting up general principles that will hold
unless they have been applied beforehand to a representative number of specifi c
cases. When this has been done, it often emerges that the principles themselves
have to be changed. Nowhere is the danger of setting up excessively rigid guide-
lines more apparent than in the Neue Bach-Ausgabe, the current new complete
Bach edition. The principles were set up before publication, but almost every
volume that has yet appeared has had either to go against them in one way or
another or else be seriously handicapped by adherence to them.
It is undeniable that a good edition obliges a performer to think. It poses
questions to which the performer must fi nd the answers. This is a challenge
that throws all too many musicians into a state of terror. They wish to be reas-
sured, they wish to be told what to do. “Is not the authority of the editor suf-
fi cient?” I have been told. “We do not really care what Bach and Scarlatti did,
all we care about is what you decided they wanted. We want to be told how to
play these pieces. Will you please give us fi ngerings, signs of articulation, pedal
marks, hairpin crescendos, and everything else.” Some of these “authoritative”
editions present an interest in retrospect which is more historical then musi-
cal. Most of them reveal that sad propensity of masterpieces for accumulating
interpretations of mediocrity. But the work of two such musicians as Busoni
and Bartók with the Well-Tempered Clavier cannot fail to arouse a certain curios-
ity. In Busoni’s edition, one discovers both the regrettable ignorance of his-
torical matters and a staggering dearth of musical sensitivity. But in the Bartók
edition, one is astonished to discover how mediocre an approach can have
been taken, in his early years, by a great composer.
Like all good things in life, really good editions are relatively rare. It is true
that in many cases, good editions need updating, but it is surprising how long a
piece of work that is carefully done will hold its own and will gracefully submit
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rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
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