[click to
enlarge]Mr. Burgess' remarks concerning the various editions of the Mozart Oboe Concerto draw to our attention the difficulties involved in achieving an authentic musical text. (See Geoffrey Burgess, "A New Edition of the Mozart Oboe Concerto, K. 314: A Checklist to Correct the Boosey & Hawkes Edition", this journal, Number 14, 1986, pp. 57-65.) Naturally we all want to play the best possible version of this Cheval de Bataille, but what really is authentic and what is editorial in the Oboe Concerto?
No autograph of the concerto exists. That is, Mozart's original score Is missing. The only surviving material in Mozart's hand bearing a resemblance to the concerto is a nine measure sketch, apparently for the first movement. It contains thematic ideas found at measure 51 and following and at measure 112 and following.[1]
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Instead of the composer's autograph manuscript, the main source for this work is a late eighteenth -century set of' manuscript parts by an unknown copyist, discovered by Bernhard Paumgartner in the archives of the Mozarteum in Salzburg in 1920. The secondary source is a late eighteenth-century set of manuscript parts for the D major Flute Concerto (which is a reworking of the Oboe Concerto) by an unknown copyist.[2] Both sources are therefore performing editions from the late eighteenth-century, and neither can be assumed to be an exact copy of Mozart's missing autographs.
The Neue Mozart Ausgabe (NMA) of the Oboe Concerto is not identical to the main source, nor is it the same as the secondary source. Rather, it is a scholarly edition, in which the editor, Franz Gicgling, has combined a high standard of' musical scholarship and skillful editorial practices with a careful critical study of both sources. As an example of the editor's scholarly judgment, Giegling has made the decision to omit the dynamic markings contained in the set of manuscript parts for the Oboe Concerto - markings which he considered to be "absolutely untypical of Mozart's procedure"[3] - and to add instead the dynamic markings from the set of manuscript parts for the Flute Concerto. This accounts for the occasional crescendo marks found in the NMA for this piece. Incidentally, the editorial practice in the NMA regarding grace notes is to modernize and standardize the notation, such that
appear consistently, replacing
when they occur in the sources (and they occur often indeed in Mozart).[4] A note-by-note and measure -by-m easure comparison of Giegling's edition with the sources mentioned above cannot be undertaken until the Kritische Bericht (Critical Commentary) for Volume V/14/3 of the NMA (now in preparation) is published.
When comparing Paumgartner's edition (Boosey & Hawkes) with the NMA, one must bear in mind that Paumgartner's is a performing edition, not a scholarly edition. Nevertheless, Paumgartner's edition is also based on a knowledge of both sources.[5] Although the Boosey & Hawkes edition does not measure up to today's critical standards, for its time (1948) it is a good performing edition, containing only a few mistakes.
From the foregoing discussion it is evident that the NMA is not an authentic or "original" edition as Mr. Burgess suggests. Rather, it is the best scholarly edition available today. Bearing the above comments in mind, I append the following checklist of additions and corrections as a supplement to the checklist provided by Mr. Burgess.
Mozart, Oboe Concerto
A checklist of further corrections to the Boosey & Hawkes 1948 edition based on the score published in the Neue Mozart Ausgabe.
Oboe Part
1st Movement
bar 37 Note that first note is tied.
46-47 No crescendo or forte marked.
54 First G stacc.
63 First two notes without stacc. in
either edition. "BH semiquavers
not slurred" should read "BA
semiquavers not slurred".
70 First four notes slurred.
72 Should read:
84 B and C quavers stacc.
122 Should read:
125 Trill on A with Bb as
upper auxiliary.
132 Low C and high C are stacc.
Second Movement
21 First two notes tied.
53 Piano dynamic marked.
77 Should read:
Third Movement
94 First two semiquavers stacc. as
well as last two semiquavers.
152 Quavers stacc.
165 Articulation:
171 Articulation:
179 E tied to D.
228 First E stacc.
250 Last two notes only slurred.
About the writer...
Islay-May Renwick received a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of' British Columbia and a Masters degree from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College of the City University of New York. She is currently pursuing post-graduate studies in oboe performance with Ronald Roseman at the Yale University School of Music.
ENDNOTES
1 . Therefore to speak of an authentic or original text for this work, as Mr. Burgess has done, is quite inaccurate.
2. Franz Giegling ed., Neue Mozart Ausgabe, serie V, werkgruppe 14, Vol. 3. (Kassel: Barenreiter Verlag, 1981), pp. VIII-IX.
5. See the preface to the Boosey & Hawkes edition. See also Bernhard Paumgartner, "Zu Mozarts Oboen-Concert C-Dur KV314 (285d)", Mozartjahrbuch 19.50, pp. 24-40.