{"id":3512,"date":"2016-04-18T09:00:14","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T07:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.henle.de\/blog\/en\/?p=3512"},"modified":"2016-04-18T08:49:05","modified_gmt":"2016-04-18T06:49:05","slug":"a-peek-through-the-keyhole%e2%80%93-bartok%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9callegro-barbaro%e2%80%9d-as-forerunner-of-the-complete-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/2016\/04\/18\/a-peek-through-the-keyhole%e2%80%93-bartok%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9callegro-barbaro%e2%80%9d-as-forerunner-of-the-complete-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"A peek through the keyhole \u2013 Bart\u00f3k\u2019s \u201cAllegro barbaro\u201d as forerunner of the complete edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>With B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k, we have added a new composer to our 2016 catalogue \u2013 always a special event for an Urtext publisher, and even a double pleasure in this case: The first is that we\u2019re starting this year a huge, 48-volume complete critical edition of this composer\u2019s works; The second is that (initially) his piano works are to appear in the blue Urtext editions for the practicing musician.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In order to exercise due diligence for this greatest of all Hungarian composers, we are approaching this project within a special partnership: that is, together with the Hungarian publishing house Editio Musica Budapest<\/a> and the Budapest Bart\u00f3k Archives<\/a>. The longtime Head of the Archives who has initiated the complete edition, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Somfai<\/a>, has now published in advance of the complete edition an Urtext edition of the Allegro barbaro<\/em> (HN 1400<\/a>), letting us have a peek through the keyhole. Reason enough for a short interview with the Bart\u00f3k scholar:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/em>Professor Somfai, you\u2019ve now spent your entire life as a scholar researching Bart\u00f3k, how his works came to be composed, and how they have been passed down to us. You\u2019ve shared this knowledge with us through numerous single monographs, major books, lectures, and a thematic works\u2019 catalogue currently in progress \u2013 now to appear, finally, are editions of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s works that you are preparing. Why is this (also) of special concern to you?<\/p>\n

Since 1972, when I became the Head of the Budapest Bart\u00f3k Archives, it was clear to me that the realization of a critical edition of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s oeuvre is very much needed. The post-war Bart\u00f3k literature was irregular and distorted: there were lots of biographical and style-analytical books and studies but hardly anything on Bart\u00f3k\u2019s compositional process or on the performance practice of his scores. The main reason for this unbalanced situation was primarily that the two major collections of his manuscripts \u2013 one in the New York Bart\u00f3k Archives, the other in our archives in Hungary \u2013 were not available for interested musicians and musicologists. Or, the ambitious writers of dissertations could get assistance from only one side; it was indeed a \u201ccold war\u201d situation.<\/em><\/p>\n

But that wasn\u2019t the only problem, or\u2026? <\/em><\/p>\n

Another worrying fact was that there were on the market different printed editions of the same works of his music \u2013 older and revised versions, pre-war Universal Edition prints and, in part, different Boosey and Hawkes versions, but also Editio Musica Budapest prints, not to mention the illegitimate but cheap Soviet pirated editions. I began fighting for a Bart\u00f3k critical edition more than four decades ago. Based on my scholarly connections with the Haydn-Institut in Cologne and the Mozarteum Salzburg, participating in Schoenberg and Webern conferences in Vienna in the 1970s, organizing a meeting in Hungary for the editors of the Schoenberg, Berg, Jan\u00e1\u010dek (etc.) <\/em>Gesamtausgabe [complete-edition] projects, I studied the new, post-war critical editions and outlined the somewhat different profile of a Bart\u00f3k edition. From the beginning it was clear that in several cases one single text of a work cannot be canonized. Furthermore, it was also recognized that Bart\u00f3k\u2019s own recordings must be treated as basic sources. It was a crucial step that already in 1981 on 26 LPs at <\/em>Hungaroton we made the complete recording of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s piano performances public. It became a great source for pianists as well as for Bart\u00f3k scholars, but without the printed critical text, it was to some extent disturbing news, especially for the performer. Because the printed text and the author\u2019s rendition were often so different!<\/em><\/p>\n

And, indeed, even this printed text still differed in the already-mentioned various editions that Bart\u00f3k himself had had published from time to time! For reappraising this sometimes very chaotic source situation, the Bart\u00f3k Archives, founded in 1961, today offers internationally unique research opportunities: Besides housing numerous original scores and documents coming from Bart\u00f3k\u2019s own possession and from various other estates, it also includes copies of sources preserved in other collections, so that viewed here can be, by your estimation, some 95% of all the sources for studying Bart\u00f3k\u2019s life and works. What do you see as the particular objective of the Bart\u00f3k complete edition?<\/p>\n

For the scholar, the edition should include not only the most authentic version of finished and published compositions and the mostly unpublished <\/em>juvenilia, but the significant variant forms, as well as the sketches and fragments. For the interpreter, the goal of the edition is not to reduce the musical text to one authentic form, but to make authentic alternative versions available; problems affecting the performance will be referred to in the main text, not just in separate critical commentaries.<\/em><\/p>\n

Bart\u00f3k occasionally published his works in revised editions. Was he a good editor of his own works?<\/p>\n

Yes, he carefully prepared the printer\u2019s copy and had a good eye for misprints. Nevertheless, while Bart\u00f3k\u2019s eye always discovered mistakes in the rhythmic arrangement, missing accidentals often escaped his notice, and note values in the metronome markings were repeatedly printed wrong (e.g., quarter instead of half note, as in case of <\/em>Allegro barbaro).<\/em><\/p>\n

And why not simply print, for example, the Allegro barbaro<\/em>, from Bart\u00f3k\u2019s revised edition?<\/p>\n

The main reason is that in this case the printed text and the performed text as Bart\u00f3k played it, not just on one occasion, but in two recordings taken at different times under different circumstances, are not identical. Thus, it is not simply the question of the basic tempo (he played it faster than indicated in the revised edition) or differently-positioned major accents, but even the length of certain ostinato sections is different; Bart\u00f3k\u2019s rendition presents a quasi \u201ccorrected version.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

With that we come back again to the audio sources. In general, they are indeed an important part of the transmission process in music of the 20th<\/sup> century and also show up as sources in our Henle Urtext editions of Scriabin<\/a> or Gershwin<\/a> pieces. Here as a rule, though, only additional information is gained about personal and\/or temporary performance variants (such as tempo, agogics or full-voicing), whereas in Bart\u00f3k\u2019s case, audio recordings are now and then significant for the actual constitution of the music text. So it also is with the Allegro barbaro<\/em>, for which a recording exists, to which he would specifically want to refer in forthcoming reprints of his edition. Why did Bart\u00f3k make such \u201cauthentic recordings?\u201d Did he not trust the printed text?<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>

Henle Urtext edition (click to enlarge)<\/p><\/div>\n

Principally, Bart\u00f3k did not intend at all to make <\/em>Referenzaufnahmen, recordings that he played as model-performances. In fact, he always took sides with live music as opposed to mechanically recorded music and proclaimed the \u201csteady variability of artistic performance\u201d (he wrote about it in an essay on \u201cMechanical music\u201d). Nevertheless, he surely heard renditions of his piano works in incorrect readings of the notation, which made him feel bitter and hopeless. Therefore, in the 1930s in two cases \u2013 in the otherwise unchanged reprint of Suite op. 14 and in the <\/em>Allegro barbaro \u2013 he instructed Universal Edition to print a footnote to the first page referring to his own recording: \u201c<\/em>Authentische Grammophon-Aufnahme (Vortrag des Komponisten)\u201d [Authentic gramophone recording (the composer\u2019s performance)], with the data from the disc produced by <\/em>His Master\u2019s Voice.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Instead of such a reference, the recording has even been consulted for your Urtext edition of the Allegro barbaro<\/em>. The variants are reproduced, shaded in grey, in the music text and explained in the \u201cEditorial notes for the performer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Autograph score, M 82\u2013107 (Budapest Bart\u00f3k Archives)<\/p><\/div>\n

They concern not only tempo, articulation, and pedal usage, but as already mentioned, also the lengths of the ostinato passages so characteristic of the piece \u2013 and in one case, the recording even discloses a possible error in the music text: In the diminuendo in mm. 88\u2013100, Bart\u00f3k plays \u2013 in accordance with the autograph \u2013 only 12 instead of 13 measures. Thus, this transitional passage has an even number of measures as is characteristic of analogous passages in the piece. Since here Bart\u00f3k plays the 12-measure version, not only in the (repeatedly checked) \u201cauthentic recording,\u201d but also in another recording, we can rule this out as a mistake. Conversely, it is quite conceivable that in copying the autograph, this one-measure spot was inadvertently copied twice, and that this error has continued down the line into the most recent printed edition, so that here the recording can\u00a0 \u201ccorrect\u201d the edition revised by Bart\u00f3k.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Henle Urtext edition (click to enlarge)<\/p><\/div>\n

What should musicians keep in mind when addressing audio-source variants in the practical edition?<\/p>\n

As a first reflex: I personally am grateful for the publisher\u2019s idea of additional grey print introduced in the <\/em>Allegro barbaro edition; it is indeed a perfect solution for suggested, but not necessarily obligatory authentic instructions. I hope that everybody who will play it from the new Henle Urtext will also listen carefully to Bart\u00f3k\u2019s recordings. In my experience, up to now even Bart\u00f3k-specialist pianists, who otherwise imitate significant features of the composer\u2019s performance, have refrained from playing different-length ostinato repetitions even if they recognized them in the recording. The Henle Urtext with the grey print and with the additional texts clearly points out that the \u201ccorrected\u201d length is indeed the composer\u2019s revision.<\/em><\/p>\n

Finally, one last question: How does it feel to have in front of you your first Bart\u00f3k Urtext edition \u2013 as a forerunner, in a way, of the complete edition?<\/p>\n

After more than four decades of a somewhat <\/em>Don Quixote fight to realize a dream, it is a special present for me.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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