Editors, editing and editions
What does an editor do? While the English
word ‘editor’ has several meanings, the French,
more precisely, define the sort of work done by editors such as
Lionel Sawkins as ‘restitution et
réalisation’ — ‘restoring’ the
original work to reflect the composer’s intentions as far
as is known, and ‘realising’, or filling in any
missing sections or individual instrumental or vocal lines,
using knowledge of the composer’s other works and of
those of his contemporaries. [The French word
‘editeur’ is used for a publisher.]
The conscientious restorer of
‘old’ music considers a whole raft of matters
musical, paleographical and literary, such as which manuscript
score or set of parts or old printed edition is the most
reliable source of a work, the paper on which the music is
written or printed (watermarks may help to date it) as well as
the different inks that may have been used (for these studies
one has to examine the originals, wherever they may be, rather
than photocopies). Bindings may indicate the origins of a
source, and much may be learned from a study of the conditions
at the court, chapel, church, or opera house where a work was
first performed, such as how and where the singers and
orchestra were placed when performing. All these need
consideration before one can usefully begin work. Simply using
a facsimile of one neatly-copied or clearly-printed source, or
feeding it into the computer, may produce something only
distantly related to what the composer actually had in mind.
Such a source may have originated decades after it was composed
and been corrupted at each stage of recopying. It may omit
vital sections or vocal or instrumental lines, or even
incorporate additions, or new voices or instruments by later
well-intentioned ‘improvers’ or
‘modernisers’ (even Mozart sought to
‘improve’ Handel’s Messiah by
re-orchestrating it).
An editor of ‘old’ music is
occasionally rewarded by the rediscovery of a major work
thought lost; such success requires the instincts and
persistence of a detective, forensic knowledge to inform the
chase, the help of fellow enthusiasts (often librarians) and a
certain amount of luck. Lionel Sawkins has made several such
discoveries, including original performing material, some
bearing the original performers’ names, for several of
Rameau’s stage works. Experience of performing the music
one is researching is also useful, making it easier to evaluate
the worth of any discovery one makes. Not all old music is
worth having the dust blown off it; much of it is best left on
the shelf. It’s the most valuable jewels one is looking
for, the works that demonstrate a style or school at its best.
Having established the best sources of a
particular work, the real work begins. A programme of grands
motets, or an opera, may keep an editor busy for up to a year,
as a fair copy of a score is first made (either by hand, or
more often today by inputting via an electric keyboard into a
computer), drawing on the various source materials, and
checking at each stage for errors, as well as recomposing any
missing parts and decoding any information that may be opaque
to modern performers. (Many eighteenth-century printed editions
of large-scale works omit inner instrumental and sometimes
vocal parts as well.) One of the detailed tasks is to ensure
that all the sung-text is correctly ‘underlaid’,
i.e. fitted under the notes to which it is to be sung (which
will often be different in each voice part).
Once the score is finished and checked, the
editor’s next job is to extract from the full score the
material individual performers will need. For an opera, or a
large choral work, a vocal score will be called for, needing a
keyboard reduction of the orchestral accompaniment for use in
rehearsal; this must ‘lie under the hands’ of the
rehearsal pianist and, if it is to be playable, not try to
incorporate all the orchestral material. Then, each orchestral
part will need extracting, and arranged on the page so that the
page-turns are in practical places, sufficient cues are
provided for re-entry after an instrument has been silent, and
text added for those instruments accompanying recitative. It is
sometimes thought that to extract parts from a
computer-generated score, one just presses a few keys, and the
job is done, but the page layout for each part may take a
considerable time, if the performers are going to have clear
and practical parts to ensure that expensive time is not wasted
in rehearsal or in the recording studio. A concert with several
different works, and a chorus, can require some 350 separate
pieces of music for the performers.
When all is done, the satisfaction for the
editor is hearing a masterpiece coming to life again, perhaps
for the first time in three hundred years. For all the works
listed in our hire library, there were no previous satisfactory
performing editions or in most cases, none at all, before
Lionel Sawkins’s pioneering work. Professional
performances have been given and sometimes recordings made of
all the editions listed. Musicians all over the world have
brought these editions to life over the last 30 years and
continue to explore this unique resource.
© Copyright 2009 Lionel Sawkins