the performer’s pilgrimage to the sources ❧ 157
what I actually played in Scarlatti sonatas in public, but as an editor I have
spent many days tracking down tiny details that generally pass unnoticed in
performance. My regard for a text as a living organism being such that I am
all too prone to making slight variations in it in performance, I seldom dare
to make a recording without using the music. If I depart in any way from the
written text, I know that I will be asked later whether I have discovered a new
source or why I play such-and-such when my own edition indicates otherwise.
Now it is clear that my own standards of editing will not work for perhaps
seventy-fi ve percent of the musical editing that must necessarily take place.
My principles work primarily only for keyboard music. To a certain extent
they work for chamber music, but unless there is endless rehearsal time, one
is going to need editions with reasonably consistent marks of articulation in
order that a reasonably satisfactory performance may be achieved without hav-
ing to undertake a complete editing job. My supposition is that solo keyboard
players, because they do not have to rehearse as much with other people, have
more time to be careful about the texts they play. But when one comes to large
ensembles and orchestral music, it is clear that any material which is not pre-
pared for the maximum effi ciency in the conduct of rehearsal is going to cost a
great deal in time, morale, and money. It is only the rare group of literate play-
ers and of players who are accustomed to playing together all the time that can
handle an urtext edition that has not been previously prepared by the leader
or conductor.
I still think that the best way of publishing standard works like the
Brandenburg Concertos, or the Bach harpsichord concertos, or the Handel con-
certi grossi is the urtext edition into which any conductor or soloist then
puts his own markings without having to spend endless time scratching out
existing markings that create confusion between his own markings and those
already in an overladen set of parts. The confusions, for example, that have
been created in Bach performances for decades by the Breitkopf Bach parts
are only now being illuminated by the gradual appearance of most of the
material in urtext form.
The musical text is by no means the only kind of source to which the per-
former can make his pilgrimages. There are those sources that aid in the elu-
cidation of a text, such as the treatises concerning the playing of instruments
that throw light on related contemporary habits of performance. If one is deal-
ing with keyboard music, it is essential to know the vocal and ensemble music
by the same composers. But there are further sources that can be tapped by
giving attention to the language, prosody, visual arts, literature, dance, and
popular music of the cultures from which the music came. And those intan-
gible sources of inspiration are not to be overlooked; the feel of a composer’s
ambience; the feel of certain localities and of surviving cities in which his music
originated. And there are any number of ever-present sources of information
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rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
#1