{"id":831,"date":"2013-03-18T07:00:09","date_gmt":"2013-03-18T06:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.henle.de\/blog\/en\/?p=831"},"modified":"2015-06-18T09:04:50","modified_gmt":"2015-06-18T07:04:50","slug":"wagner-liszt-and-isolde-%e2%80%98slurred%e2%80%99%e2%80%93-how-well-do-composers-proofread-their-own-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/2013\/03\/18\/wagner-liszt-and-isolde-%e2%80%98slurred%e2%80%99%e2%80%93-how-well-do-composers-proofread-their-own-works\/","title":{"rendered":"Wagner, Liszt, and Isolde \u2018slurred\u2019\u2013 how well do composers proofread their own works?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The current Wagner year is also not going unnoticed at the Henle publishing house, even if music stage works are not part of our offerings. With Isoldens Liebestod<\/em>, that is, Franz Liszt\u2019s piano transcription of the closing scene from Wagner\u2019s Tristan und Isolde<\/em>, we are for the first time publishing a work that is fundamentally based on another composer\u2019s composition. (In contrast to Liszt\u2019s Rigoletto Paraphrase<\/em> HN 978<\/strong><\/a>, which is a free fantasia on themes from Verdi\u2019s opera of the same name). Liszt\u2019s congenial transcription seems to us, on the one hand, a suitable birthday present for the Leipzig Master, but also at the same time a splendid piano composition in its own right that has earned a place in our catalogue.<\/p>\n

During work on our new Urtext edition (HN 558<\/a>), which we are introducing at the Frankfurt Music Fair in April, there occurred a source situation that was for us both exceptional and unprecedented. Not only did we have to consider Liszt\u2019s autograph and the printed editions of Isoldens Liebestod<\/em> that appeared during his lifetime, but also Wagner\u2019s model, whose text except for a brief introduction Liszt followed literally to the bar. (If Liszt\u2019s virtuosic piano piece were not so pianistically ingenious and did not sound so orchestral, we could almost speak of it sacrilegiously as a \u2018piano reduction\u2019\u2026)<\/p>\n

It became clear that for specific questions the score of Tristan und Isolde <\/em>represents an important corrective for the edition, because the first edition of Isoldens Liebestod<\/em>, published in 1868 by Breitkopf & H\u00e4rtel in Leipzig, as well as also the edition of 1875 revised by Liszt, which served us as the main source, exhibit several questionable passages. Liszt himself was in fact generally considered very meticulous in his proofreading and revision, as shown by this admonition to another music publisher:<\/p>\n

\u2018You know, dear friend, that to me shoddy editions are an abomination; so pay attention to the least of my notes, including their f, p, cresc., etc. etc. and take these precisely into account just as surely as your bookkeeper does not fail to do with the thalers and groschen of your publishing-house accounts! My intellectual property is not less important to me than his material belongings are to the businessman, and I am most sensitive to slurrings of the engraving<\/strong>.\u2019
\n(Letter to Julius Schuberth of 5 September 1863, quoted from<\/em> Franz Liszts Briefe, ed. La Mara, vol. 8, Leipzig, 1905, p. 164.)<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nevertheless, with a number of proofreadings of Isoldens Liebestod<\/em> several instances of \u2018slurring of engraving\u2019, i.e., corruptions and engraving errors, did escape even Franz Liszt, although we would suppose that it would be just the originator who would be most likely to have caught these. This paradoxical phenomenon is encountered in the case of many composers \u2013 but the danger is probably just this, that the creator is only too involved in \u2018hearing\u2019 a work and can no longer painstakingly correct the galley proofs against his autograph.<\/p>\n

In Liszt\u2019s case, we learn from his correspondence with Breitkopf that he was also glad to get the galley proofs already bound in a volume so that he could play through them more easily at the piano. So, his approach is completely different from that of the editor who at a desk stolidly compares the galleys note for note with the original model and that\u2019s anyway what he is paid to do\u2026 And since Liszt virtually had his composition in his fingers, he obviously played past details such as forgotten accidentals or wrongly-positioned slurs along the way. Two examples from Isoldens Liebestod<\/em> should quickly verify this:<\/p>\n

In the first instance, Liszt notated in the autograph a tie, e-flat<\/em>2<\/sup>\u2014e-flat<\/em>2<\/sup> \u2013 short indeed, but for his handwriting, distinct \u2013 in the top voice of the right hand (see the arrow).
\n\"Autograph<\/a>
\nF. Liszt, Isoldens Liebestod<\/em>, autograph, measure 12, upper stave (Weimar, GSA 60\/U32)
\nIllustration by kind permission of the Goethe- and Schiller-Archive, Weimar<\/span><\/p>\n

But the engraver erroneously placed the tie as a slur in the middle voice, so that now the second e-flat<\/em>2<\/sup> was to be struck again \u2013 an audible difference:
\n\"Druckausgabe<\/a>
\nF. Liszt, Isoldens Liebestod<\/em>, revised edition, 1875, measure 12, upper stave<\/span><\/p>\n

The engraver blundered with another \u2018slip\u2019 in measure 59: the sharp before d-sharp<\/em>1<\/sup> is here oddly superfluous (d-sharp<\/em> is already indeed specified by the key):
\n\"Druckausgabe,<\/a>
\nF. Liszt, Isoldens Liebestod<\/em>, revised edition, 1875, measure 59, lower stave<\/span><\/p>\n

Hence, several posthumous editions leave the accidental out entirely, but that misses the point of the problem, as is evident from the autograph: that is, the sharp actually belongs in front of the b<\/em>:
\n\"Autograph,<\/a>
\nF. Liszt, Isoldens Liebestod<\/em>, autograph, measure 59, lower stave (Weimar, GSA 60\/U32)
\nIllustration by kind permission of the Goethe- and Schiller-Archive, Weimar<\/span><\/p>\n

That the autograph is really correct in both instances can now easily be confirmed with the aid of Wagner\u2019s score; there the tie from the first example is in the melody of the 1st<\/sup> violin (colla parte<\/em> with the song), and the b-sharp<\/em> is a passing tone to the c-sharp<\/em>1<\/sup> in oboe, bassoon and trumpet. But take a look for yourself: on page 426<\/a> and 437<\/a> in the original conductor\u2019s score of the Munich premi\u00e8re of Tristan and Isolde<\/em>, preserved in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and at present on display there in an exhibition well worth seeing<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The current Wagner year is also not going unnoticed at … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[312,317,399,284,3,322,113,294],"tags":[45,44,112,654,111,110],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831"}],"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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}