What means this naming that is being called "Urtext Deathmatch"?

Well, I've clearly fallen off the ball/taken my eye off the map since the "launch" of this blog, so now that had a play day that included sleeping in, sunning out by the Christopher Street Pier (admittedly while studying Schubert 8), going to see "The September Issue" (recommended!) and listening to Miguel Batista stink it up pitching (for the Mariners, of course) against the A's, I figured I should at least finish a post that I'd started a few days ago, namely...

Why "Urtext Deathmatch?"

"Urtext" is a German word that translates to "Original Text", and denotes what has become the holy grail of contemporary music publishing for works that are otherwise in the public domain*. The musicologists who are commissioned by the publishing houses to create these editions will locate and examine every available manuscript, engravers copy, corrected proof, conducting/performing score, original orchestral part, letter with instructions to engravers or errata lists, written or oral histories of contemporaries, etc. and try to arrive at a definitive text (hopefully with variants and commentaries) that represents the composer's final version of the work.

There is an unfortunate tendency these days to take the written score/part as sacred object that is to be followed as slavishly and conscientiously as scripture by a fundamentalist or the constitution by a strict constructionist. The urtext designation on an edition tends to amplify this tendency. My attitude toward music notation in general is "take nothing for granted, take nothing at face value". A well-executed** urtext edition is an invaluable resource, but I'm leery of using it as my only reference for studying a work for performance.***

So the initial impetus for this blog and its title is my interest in using multiple editions in studying and the questions that arise. The result of these "Deathmatches" between editions will probably not be posted very often, as this comparative analysis is a bit of a slog and I'm sure writing them up will be time consuming as well. The first one on my plate is the completion of one that I started several years ago using the following sources for Schubert's Unfinished Symphony: the manuscript facsimile, the Brahms edition from the 19th century Breitkopf collected works, the Norton (Chusid) critical, the recent Bretikopf (Gülke) urtext, and the unfortunate Bärenreiter (Dürr).

Why go to this trouble? I believe that close and thorough study of a score is more about finding the questions than the answers -- and conflicting editions help me doubt more and think harder. Only then do I find myself contemplating the deeper issues that guide me to a strongly held point of view and a greater appreciation of the composer's struggle to transmit the fully realized work using the imperfect, inadequate of notational means at our disposal.

* This is an important distinction -- given classical publishers' (especially Barenreiter, Breitkopf and Henle, less so Boosey, which has a catalog of still-under-copyright cash cows such as Puccini's Turandot, Britten's operas, and post-1926 Stravinsky and Bartok) reliance on sales of music that has passed into the public domain, the creation of copyright-protected critical/urtext editions is key to preserving revenue streams that would otherwise be lost to reprint houses such as Dover, Kalmus/Masters/Belwin, and Luck's.
** "Well executed", in my mind, means that the edition provides all the information available from the sources to enable the performer to make an informed decision on the musical text given the range of possible interpretations of the source materials. That means that all editorial additions and adjustments are clearly indicated as such in the text and variants are catalogued as footnotes or endnotes. There are too many cases (e.g. the Bärenreiter Schubert editions) where the need for a particular publication to also function as a performing edition leads to editorial interventions of a type that obscure the range of possible of interpretations. By their nature, true urtext editions should retain a certain amount of ambiguity (unless the composer his/herself serves as the final editor.)
*** Three footnotes in a blog post is two footnotes too many. But the applicable aphorism for this is "A man with two watches never knows what time it is." For performers, it's a good thing not to be too certain at the very beginning of the study process -- it can foreclose too much.

Eulenburg Audio + Score series -- some great critical/urtext editions for cheap!

When I saw that Eulenburg/Schott had begun publishing a 50 volume, glossy-covered, study (not pocket) score-sized editions of standard orchestral rep with companion CDs inside the back cover, I thought it was a clever way to repackage their existing library in a more marketable form but, with my usual snobby reflexes was doubtful I'd want to be seen with a score that came packaged with its own CD.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, while many of the volumes preserved the comfortably familiar 10%-too-much-ink-on-the-plate orthography of the old school pocket scores, there are a number that present very affordable and readable reproductions of the best available urtext/critical editions published by Schott and Breitkopf and Härtel.

Particularly noteworthy:

Dvorak Symphony No. 8 in the new (2004) edition by Klaus Döge that incorporates tempo markings and other information from Dvorak's conducting score that was also used as an engraver's copy. I unfortunately didn't discover this until after I'd spent $70+ on the full size score (the consolation being that the full score has the detailed critical report at the end)

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 in Thomas Kohlhase's 1993 edition from the new collected works published by Schott (it doesn't appear that this particular collected works has made any progress past this volume and an album of piano pieces, unfortunately).

Other volumes, such as Dvorak Symphony No. 9 appear to have had corrections applied to the old plates; the score of Mozart Symphony No. 35 (Haffner) is newly engraved, though the critical provenance is unclear.

Overall, the series is worth checking out. And if you happen to make it to a good book or record shop in China, you'll find that this series and a fair number of the Eulenburg pocket score are available for very low prices -- 38 RMB for the Dvorak 8, which is around $6 US.

Update, 9/5/09: Had a chance to look at a few volumes from this series at the Juilliard Bookstore. A large number are re-engraved and list Richard Clarke (presumably not the counter-terrorism expert) as editor but offer no other provenance or list of sources, etc. Probably not a bad alternative to Dover reprints, given their improved readability and free CD, but not necessarily any more reliable than the older Eulenburgs.