Why do we need scholarly editions of music?

Hello and welcome to Early music sources.com. My name is Elam Rotem and today we’ll talk about why we need scholarly editions of music. WHY DO WE NEED SCHOLARLY EDITIONS OF MUSIC? Early music performers love dealing with the original sources of music. Seeing how music was seen in the eyes of those who performed and studied it centuries ago is one way to immerse oneself in the music of the past and develop historical skills. It brings one closer to the essence of the music. However, not all survi

ving music sources were meant to be used as performance materials, and even those that were are not necessarily comfortable for us to use. In any event, old sources of all kinds raise many questions and we need the appropriate tools to try and answer them. In this episode we will talk about scholarly editions of music sources, why we need them, and how you can also make editions on your own. Let’s start. In many past episodes, when presenting a certain historical musical source we quickly replac

ed it with a modern transcription. Even if the source is written very clearly, and even if one is experienced with reading old sources, modern notation is perhaps equivalent to the mother tongue of modern musicians - the language in which we understand music most directly, avoiding any unnecessary loss of brain power when we decode it. It’s not only about having the music printed using a modern “font”, it’s about employing modern notation conventions. In this example from the Carlo G manuscript

the 7-line keyboard staves were replaced with the modern 5-line staves, the beaming of the melismas were grouped according to modern practices and editorial musica ficta alterations were added. All these transformations are made to simply ease the decoding process of the music - to make it quickly accessible in the reader’s mind. Furthermore, in handwritten sources often things are simply unclear: both text and notes may be ambiguous. The idea is that someone - an editor - will patiently examine

it and will report their conclusions. Again, to save you - the reader - time and energy. But not only handwritten manuscripts gain from a modern transcription, also neatly printed scores, such as this 1629 sonata by Castello we featured in a recent video, would be much easier to read (for us) if transcribed into modern notation. In the case of vocal music, be it in manuscript or in print, a common issue is the text and text underlay: in many sources scribes used abbreviations of different kinds

. If you know the language and texts and are fluent in the text underlay conventions of the time, this task is not so challenging, but otherwise, most singers nowadays would probably appreciate it if these details are sorted out for them. Ok, so it’s clear that translating old notation conventions into modern ones is helpful for musicians nowadays, but what if we still want to use sources with old notation? Well, it’s possible, but in many cases the way the music survived was not meant to be use

d in performance, not even back then. Indeed, many surviving musical sources were created as luxury items that were not necessarily meant to be used in performance. On the other hand we have precious composers' autographs, that are highly valuable for research, but again, were not at all meant to be used in performance. Now, there are sources which seem as if they were meant to be used for performance, for instance some sources of liturgical music. These sources are typically larger with larger

noteheads, making communal reading of the music more practical. This can be seen in sources of liturgical chant, like this 14th-century manuscript, but also in later sources with polyphonic music, like this 16th-century manuscript with motets by Orlando di Lasso. This format is referred to as “choir book” format - where the different parts are separately laid out on the page, and the singers would gather around the book, grouped according to their voice. With the flourishing of printing presses

in the 16th century, a lot of music was published, and it was almost always printed in a way that was meant to be comfortable to use for musicians. Be it in separate partbooks where each musician had a little book with only his own part, or different kinds of “choir book” formats, something for us modern readers seems to be missing - a full score! Indeed, apart from special and rare cases, full scores that lock all the parts together were not commonly used. As we showed in past episodes, if some

one wished to examine a piece of polyphony, or arrange it for an instrument (as was common), they would need to make their own score or tablature from the different parts. And if we - modern readers - want to examine polyphonic pieces without performing them, we need to do the same thing, or hope that someone, preferably a musicologist we can trust, already has done it and published it in a modern edition. The point is that even in cases where surviving music sources were meant to be practical a

nd be used by musicians in performance, we modern musicians not only need to modernize the notation, but also to put the separate parts together in a score, both for simply examining the music - to SEE how the parts combine together - but in the case of vocal music, also for performance, as we are accustomed to have full scores in this case. But modernizing the notation and putting the parts together is the easy part, there are several cases in which we want to have this editing process be to do

ne by a specialist - usually a musicologist who both knows the style and has experience in solving textual problems of all sorts. Here are some examples. TOUCH OF A SPECIALIST 1. Collation of sources: Sometimes, the same music is preserved in different sources: the composer’s autograph manuscript (a precious kind of source which is increasingly rare the more we go back in time), copies of the composer’s autograph, separate copied parts, a printed version, further copies or editions of the printe

d versions, manuscript copies of the print, and more, and each of them might be slightly different. In addition, surviving sources of arrangements of the works may also be consulted. Based on the surviving materials the editor has to compile a version that he believes represents the composer’s work the best. This is done by creating such a chart of the available sources called “stemma” This work demands a thorough understanding of the context of each source and sometimes, also details of the his

torical printing process. For example, did you know that in movable-type printing one may find differences even within different copies of the same printed edition due to corrections made during the process of printing? Or that a “reprint” edition mostly meant the re-setting of all the types from scratch, inviting further mistakes and inconsistencies? I didn’t know that, it’s crazy. 2. The human problem: whether in print or manuscript, the humans who produced them made mistakes. When finding a s

uspiciously curious moment in the music, the careful editor should decide whether it is simply a mistake or a very bold move on the side of the composer. If they believe it is a mistake they should offer a plausible “correction” based on a deep understanding of the relevant musical style, since of course, a musical error in Palestrina's style for example won’t necessarily be considered an error in that of Monteverdi. Sometimes, errors are great as they can help scholars determine whether one sou

rce is a copy of another source, and by this understand the “stemma” of the piece better. 3. Special notational techniques: sometimes music is notated in a way that doesn't translate directly, or smoothly, into modern notation. You want someone who truly understands the music they are editing to find the way to transform them into modern notation. Another example is in the field of ornament signs: the same sign may mean one thing for one composer and another thing to another composer. The editor

should be aware of these problems and decide what is the best way to communicate this to the reader. 4. Unclear details: Sometimes, things are simply unclear. For example, in some repertoires the text underlay is not straightforward, to say the least. You want someone who is experienced in this style to find a solution. The same is true for questions of musica ficta. Of course, you eventually decide what to do, but it’s great to have a specialist’s solution on hand 5. More mess. Sometimes manus

cripts are left in quite a confusing state, like this Vivaldi autograph of a concerto for strings for example. At first glance it looks like a piece for three instruments - violin, viola and cello, with some deleted measures in the middle, and a stretch where the viola doesn’t play. However, knowing the rest of the manuscript and other pieces by Vivaldi it’s clear that the first line is the music of both violin one and two, and that the viola is asked to play with the bass in the empty measures,

in this case an octave higher. This source, like many others, was not written for a performer, but for a careful copyist who would have known how to read it. A modern scholar takes this role when preparing an edition for you. As you see, in some cases working with the originals might be very challenging, and having an expert going through it before you do is very helpful. But what if there is no modern edition for the music you want to perform? What if you just want to try out some unedited 16t

h-century polyphony but your colleagues are not keen on reading from original notation? Well, you probably have to make an edition yourself! Here is a demonstration of how this may be done. To demonstrate this I chose a collection of “Napolitane” from 1570. I downloaded the pdfs of the three separate parts from the Austrian National Library, found the first piece in each of the books, and was ready to go. The notation software that I use is Finale - but I don’t especially like it or recommend it

; as long as you know how to use it it doesn’t really matter. The first thing we need to do is set the key and time signatures. The key is easy - generally in the 16th century it was either with a flat or without a flat, so here we are without. The time signature is slightly more complicated as we are forced to add bar lines to music that didn’t have them originally. However, when transcribing 16th-century music in duple meter, in most cases there are two options: either common time with four qu

arters per measure or alla breve, also called cut-C, with four half notes per measure. The printed time signature won’t always give you the right answer but in this case, due to the abundance of quick note values with text, it seems like common time will do. Now we can start copying the parts. I like to start with the outer voices first, so let’s start with the top one. Oh, an important point is accidentals: in modern notation the application of accidentals is directly affected by bar lines - a

n accidental is applied and then valid within the entire bar. In a world without bar lines the rule was different: most commonly, an accidental is valid only once, unless the note is immediately repeated. In this case the note that is altered by an accidental is repeated but after a rest, so the accidental should probably not affect the following note. I’m not 100% sure about it so let’s revisit and verify this once we have more voices. Nice. We see that it has a form of a repeated A and a repea

ted B. This is important to note as repetitions may be valuable for editors: if you find something strange in one place you can check how it is in its repetition. Now let’s copy the bass part in. While we do that we can already examine the counterpoint a little bit and see if things fit. Doing this may help you find mistakes in the source, or, also very likely, catch some copying mistakes of your own. Something that pops out to me are the cadences: it seems that in all of them the common alterat

ion of “fa super la” would be appropriate. However, since it’s not, after all, written, and there are other B-flats which are explicitly written, I will add it in a small font above the note. In this way the reader knows that originally it was not there, but that I, the editor, think that it should be there in performance. Feel free to watch our episode about musica ficta if you want to refresh your memory on this subject. Something else that catches my attention are the shameless parallel fifth

s at the cadences of the B part - this shouldn’t be possible according to the theorists. After checking again very closely in both parts and in both repeats to be sure that it is indeed the case, I decide to leave it as it is for now and go on with the transcription of the middle voice. Quite quickly I arrive at another issue concerning accidentals: the original has only one sharp for two successive notes, while I am forced to explicitly mark the second one as well because it’s after a bar line.

Notice, this is not an editorial suggestion, both notes should have a sharp, but because of the notational conventions the source only noted the first one. At the two cadences of B, only the first sharp is notated. According to the strict rules the second one should not have a sharp, but as this is clearly a cadential pattern, there is no doubt in my mind that also the second note should have a sharp. Before adding the text we need to check two things: first, the accidental after a rest which w

e weren’t totally sure about. Seeing it in context, it is very clear that the second note shouldn’t be sharpened, as this would create a bad interval of an augmented fifth. Second, we should reconsider those weird parallel fifths at the cadences. I’ll play it for you on the harpsichord. Again, according to the theorists from that period such a thing is simply considered an error; you’ll probably not find such progressions in compositions of Palestrina for example. One could try and “correct” it,

for example like this. But seeing that a correction includes many changes, and that it is repeated a second time in the same way, such a correction would be regarded as a very intrusive editorial action. Dealing with this problem, I’m reminded of another “Napolitana” I once saw with such parallels. Reading a bit about it, I was surprised to find out that in the genre of such simple Neapolitan songs - sometimes called Villanelle - parallel triads are found quite commonly. The theorist Ludovico Z

acconi explained in 1592 that Villanella composers sometimes disregard the rules of counterpoint on purpose as an imitation of untrained musicians singing in company. Just to be sure, I quickly looked at the final cadences of all the 28 three-part pieces in our collection, and found out that in 10 of them there are such parallels in the final cadence! Here is one of them: Learning about this surprising and historical abuse of what I thought to be a very basic rule, I’m happy to leave those paral

lels in the edition without any correction or apology. All that is left now is to add the text. And we are done! A nice thing to add is the original clef of each voice, and also, should you so desire, an “incipit” - the first notes of each voice in original notation. By adding it, the readers know whether you changed something they should know about, such as the key or the rhythmic values of the notes. But there are also other ways to edit the music. One may try to retain as many original elemen

ts as possible: the clefs, the noteheads, and the lack of barlines. There is no right or wrong, really, there are just conventions and common practices among musicologists and performers. Of course, the more comprehensive an editorial project is, the more comprehensive the editors’ report is concerning their decisions. They might add a short description of their editorial policy, a detailed list of all the sources they consulted, and a long list of each and every detail in the source that they d

ecided to change and why. In fact, a good deal of musicology can be learned by examining the reports of such professional editions. On the other side of things, nowadays, there are countless free editions made by dedicated amateurs that employ all kinds of practices; some really bad and misleading and some which are really good! For me as a researcher, I’m happy to have an accessible edition which is not super professional over nothing at all. And of course, if I’m going to work with the source

more seriously I will make my own edition or look for a scholarly edition I feel I can trust. This was our episode about scholarly editions, we hope that you enjoyed it and that it might have inspired you to try and edit yourself some of the countless pieces which were left unedited to this day! Many thanks to Alon Schab who helped me write this episode. If you enjoy Early Music Sources feel free to support us on Patreon, comment, share and like. See you next time at Early Music Sources.com