Preface
Introduction
Two years ago, when I started thinking about the program for my final bachelor exam, the idea came into existence to play the c minor sonata for violin and piano (harpsichord) BWV 1017 by J. S. Bach. I went to a music store to see which editions were available. There were five editions available of which two were Urtext editions (Henle and Bärenreiter). Automatically, I chose between these two, because I have always been told that these are the best editions. When I looked at the other editions, I noticed some huge differences in printing quality and paper quality, but also variations in phrasing and articulation. Some editions even had very old-fashioned fingerings and bowings which cannot be found in any Urtext edition*. Then after a more detailed look at the two Urtext editions, I found out that even these editions had some differences in the way articulation was notated. At the end I chose for the Bärenreiter edition: this edition was comprehensively offered with two separate violin parts and even a viola da gamba part.
This was the moment I started wondering: “How is it possible that Urtext editions differ from each other?”, “On what basis do violinists choose the editions they play from?” and “What do we know about editions and do they influence our playing? And if they do influence our playing, to what extent and in what way?”. I noticed that, thinking about these questions and discussing them with colleagues and fellow students, a lot of assumptions were made concerning publishers and editions but that often, we do not really know the situation. All those questions and thoughts seemed to be a good basis to start my research.
Research question and sub-questions
The research is focussing on violinists. However, the results could be interesting for other musicians as well. The intention with this research is to raise awareness of what the source is that violinists play from. Therefore the main question of this research is:
“In what way does a publisher influence the interpretation of a violinist?”
Hence a few sub-questions could be formulated: “What type of editions do exist concerning violin repertoire?” “How do publishers profile themselves”, and “On what basis do violinists choose an edition to play from?”. With the outcome of this research I will provide a small hand guide for violinists, providing tips and suggestions when choosing an edition to play from.
Research process
This research is mainly a practice-based research: a lot of the results have been found by involving other people who deal with publishers, their editions and the performance-practise as violinist. To find out what kind of editions are used by violinists it is needed to know what kind of editions are available concerning the violin repertoire. To figure this out, phone calls and real-live conversations were made with Broekmans & van Poppel, the main Dutch music scores retail shop (based in Amsterdam), and Albersen, a music scores retail shop in The Hague. Combining the information that was received from the conversations, and observing the catalogue of many publishers it was possible to form a distinction in four different types of editions.
Different editions would not exist if there would not be so many publishers who have their own vision about sheet music. To understand why publishers sell certain editions it is needed to look at the background of a publishing house. Therefore a profile was made of 11 prominent publishers. The information was provided by reading their official websites. With many publishers the history of the concerning publishing house was provided on their website. To give this chapter a different perception a questionnaire was made and sent to those 11 publishers. This questionnaire contained questions concerning the profile of the company and was made to receive a more personal answer on the research question. This was done repeatedly by e-mail and also Facebook. Interesting to notice is that after the first e-mail nobody replied. After a second e-mail, Henle was the first who filled-out the questionnaire. After sending another e-mail without reactions, other ways of making contact had to be done. Using Messenger at the their official Facebook page helped enormously to get into contact with the publishers. However, the amount of people who filled-out the questionnaire on behalf of their company stayed at five (two people from Henle did fill-out the questionnaire). That was a bit disappointing. Moreover, the questionnaire was filled-out twice but every question was answered with an ‘x’. Apparently someone did not wanted to contribute to this research. Even so, the extra information that was provided by doing this questionnaire gave an extra dimension to this part of the research.
To find out on what basis violinists choose a certain edition, also a questionnaire was spread. This was mainly done on Facebook and luckily a lot more people responded to this questionnaire. 51 violinists filled-out this questionnaire. In this chapter all outcomes are shown in pie diagrams to make it more clear. Besides, an interview was done with a representative of Broekmans & van Poppel, (the scores retail shop), about the trend of customers and publishers as well. This interview was done to see whether the answers that were given by the violinists matched with the experience of a retailer.
Finally, to show what kind of effect sheet music has on a violinist, a case study was done in which a violinist sight reads a passage from the c minor sonata BWV 1017 by J. S. Bach played from different editions. A second case study will highlight differences in editions of the first violin concerto of S. Prokofieff.
I do hope you will enjoy reading this paper. For the readers that are musicians or music-lovers buying sheet music every now and then: Hopefully it will provide you with ideas and insights that are usable when the moment is there that you need a new score.