{"id":6515,"date":"2021-10-25T08:00:45","date_gmt":"2021-10-25T06:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.henle.de\/blog\/en\/?p=6515"},"modified":"2021-10-21T10:44:32","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T08:44:32","slug":"excess-and-empty-space-text-variants-in-dvoraks-cello-concerto-op-104","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/2021\/10\/25\/excess-and-empty-space-text-variants-in-dvoraks-cello-concerto-op-104\/","title":{"rendered":"Excess and empty space: Text variants in Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s Cello Concerto op. 104"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Anton\u00edn Dvo\u0159\u00e1k (1841\u20131904)<\/p><\/div>\n

Anton\u00edn Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s Cello Concerto op. 104 may be a special challenge for cellists, but for the editor of an Urtext edition it is a real nightmare. Not only \u2013 as so often with Dvo\u0159\u00e1k \u2013 are there numerous differences between the score and first edition that are difficult to resolve. No, also showing up time and again even within the individual sources, especially in the solo part, are discrepancies and ambiguities, be they owing to multiple overwritings in the autograph or small dynamic and articulation variants between the individual printed part and the score or piano reduction. The engraver\u2019s model for the first edition, which Dvo\u0159\u00e1k himself wrote out in the autumn of 1895, would indeed be very helpful \u2013 but it is unfortunately lost. Appearing in New York a few years ago was an early copy of a separate solo part, apparently from Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s immediate milieu, that surprises in some places with precisely counted \u201cblank measures\u201d.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s start with the autograph: Dvo\u0159\u00e1k wrote the cello concerto during his last \u201cAmerican winter\u201d\u00a0 in 1894\/95 and recorded at the end of the score: \u201cFinished in New York on 9 February 1895 on the birthday of our [son] Ot\u00e1\u010dek early on Saturday morning, around 11:30.\u201d As early as December 1894 he had mentioned to his publisher Fritz Simrock a performance planned for the end of the season in America. At the end of February he reported to the family that in fact \u201chere and there\u201d he was still changing \u201clittle things\u201d at the concert, but had already presented this to various cellists who forecast a \u201cbrilliant future\u201d for the work.<\/p>\n

One of these cellists was\u00a0 also an old acquaintance of Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s, Alwin Schroeder of the Kneisel Quartet, from whose possession the aforementioned copy with the blank measures comes (image courtesy of:\u00a0 Bob Williamson Collection, Dvo\u0159\u00e1k American Heritage Association, and the New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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Early copy of the solo part, movement I, mm. 145\u2013185 (mm. 158\u2013172 blank).<\/p><\/div>\n

It was probably made for a performance or a joint rehearsal, for the music text is so laid out that the soloist can turn pages during measures of rest. Scattered rehearsal numbers, together with pencilled fingerings in some places, also suggest that this part had a practical use \u2013 but how to explain the blank measures in the outer movements (movement I, mm. 158\u2013171 and 285\u2013298, movement III, mm. 177\u2013188)? A glance at the autograph score, now preserved in the Prague National Museum (Czech Museum of Music<\/a>, Anton\u00edn Dvo\u0159\u00e1k Fund, S 76\/1540), surprisingly reveals contradictory findings: where blank emptiness prevails in the separate solo part, to be found here is an excess of variants in the up to four writing layers in the solo part!<\/p>\n

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2 excerpts from the autograph score, showing the notation of the solo part, movement I, mm. 158\u2013160 and 161\u2013165.<\/p><\/div>\n

The exact text comparison of both sources \u2013 autograph score versus solo-part copy \u2013\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>provides the explanation: The copy contains only a few of the changes entered into the autograph\u2019s music text, thus presumably attesting to the exact text status of the autograph\u2019s first revision, mentioned in Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s letter of February 1895, which, though, was far from the last.<\/p>\n

Rather, after his return to his Bohemian homeland in the spring of 1895, Dvo\u0159\u00e1k revised it also in collaboration with, amongst others, the cellist Hanu\u0161 Wihan, to whom the concerto is dedicated. Besides Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s fundamental changes, such as composing a new ending, the autograph also reveals in many spots that composer and interpreter \u201cpolished\u201d the solo part together \u2013 as in the excerpt from mm. 158\u2013165. The copy was thus evidently made at a time when nothing had yet been decided \u2013 perhaps blank measures were even supposed to serve as \u201cspace for your notes\u201d, so that here the cellist performing it could even ponder his own version?<\/p>\n

Noteworthy, incidentally, is that this (and just so also with the other \u201cblank measures\u201d) is not a brilliant solo passage, but an accompanying figure. Musically foregrounded in this transition passage is the plaintive woodwind motif, which the soloist underlays with only a delicate\u00a0 \u201csoundscape\u201d. For this purpose, Dvo\u0159\u00e1k had initially planned a simpler figuration in groups of four, which was evidently discussed in various alternatives, before Wihan then ultimately entered the original broken chords in 16th<\/sup>-note sextuplets in the lower stave, the beautiful and subtle execution of which still poses a challenge for every cellist.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We found this passage so typical of the joint composer-performer collaboration that we even used it as the frontispiece of our new Urtext edition of the Cello Concerto<\/a> \u2013 even though it is not one of the \u201cquestionable passages\u201d that the editor reports having caused a headache. But read about these problems (and how we successfully solved them with the wonderful support of cellist Steven Isserlis) in the near future \u2013 after all, Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s Cello Concerto is worth more than a single blog post!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anton\u00edn Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s Cello Concerto op. 104 may be a special … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,313,491,34,3],"tags":[770],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6515"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6518,"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6515\/revisions\/6518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}