There is little doubt that this new Bärenreiter Urtext of the Beethoven Septet in E-flat major, Op. 20, edited by Jonathan Del Mar, fills a gap in the current scholarship around this major work and its existing sources. It offers significantly more academic research and insight than the Henle Urtext, which has long been the go-to edition. However, my question while studying the Bärenreiter score and parts was whether it was really the most useful edition for performance.
The information on the sources is worth the price of the score. The reader can easily get a clear sense of Beethoven's compositional process, insight into the primary sources and Beethoven's role in each, how and why each subsequent printed edition appeared and on what source it was based, and a fascinating glimpse into the art of deciphering Beethoven's handwriting. We see Del Mar's experience in interpreting Beethoven's handwriting interspersed throughout the edition. The Preface is intended to explain some of Beethoven's notational idiosyncrasies. One of the most interesting sections, ‘Punkte and Striche’, could benefit from further explanation. Del Mar mentions Beethoven's articulation corrections in the Seventh Symphony Allegretto, but then does not finish the thought by telling us what those corrections were. Frustratingly, Bärenreiter's study score of that symphony does not give us the information either. One finds merely a portion of the identical paragraph concerning articulation that is printed in the Septet edition. In the next sentence, there is a quotation from a Beethoven letter stating that strokes and dots should be different. Del Mar's next few sentences create confusion as he seems to interpret this to say that staccatos should always be written as strokes and dots only used in the portato articulation (vii). The quotation and Del Mar's analysis seem to be at odds, and we are either given too little information to understand his point or Del Mar's writing here is too unclear.
For those interested in retracing Del Mar's footsteps, the Critical Commentary should be designed to illuminate every research-based decision that formed this edition. However, this Critical Commentary is confusing, unclear, and at times chaotic. Despite Del Mar's warning in his writings on the Bärenreiter website that even the best colour scans ‘are never one hundred per cent reliable’ and that ‘copies are treacherous’, the reader may wish to consult these sources, and they are all available online.Footnote 1 Although he tells fascinating anecdotes about two occasions where original Beethoven manuscripts were able to provide information not decipherable in copies, there is concurrently a sense of gatekeeping from his position of scholarly privilege.
I chose to explore the first significant difference I found between the Bärenreiter Urtext and the Henle Urtext Editions as an example of the editing. This comes in bars 53–54 in the violin, viola, and cello parts. Bärenreiter marks strokes over the minims in the violin and viola, while marking the cello minims as portato. When we turn to the Critical Commentary, Del Mar is expecting us. He tells us that the violin and viola are marked staccato in the autograph and first edition parts, saying it is ‘irrefutable and must be retained’ (I – 91). He knows musicians will want to change Beethoven's strokes back to the lyrical portato to create the delicious contrast with the strokes heard in the bars before and after. Nonetheless, Del Mar certainly has a point that Beethoven clearly wrote the strokes, as he tells us that strokes appeared in all three string parts in the autograph. Why not then choose to follow the autograph, giving matching strokes to all three string parts? Del Mar seems to be more convinced by the first edition parts which have the contrasting articulation in the cello.
He notes that the composer was evidently revising the articulation, and mentions the trio arrangement, Op. 38. He writes about revision that occurred through that work but he does not describe the different sources of the trio or how the revision happens. Deciding to dive down rabbit holes, I learned that only the violin part survives of the autograph for the trio, Op. 38,Footnote 2 and that the bars in question are marked with strokes, compared to the first edition where the clarinet and cello are marked legato (while the piano is marked staccato).Footnote 3 This is only part of the confusion, though; indeed, one must wonder why Del Mar is mentioning the trio at all, as he states (in the Sources section and again in the critical note) that the trio is a different piece. He calls it an arrangement at the same time, since it uses much material from Op. 20, so it is unclear how Del Mar sees this work fitting into decisions made in this edition.
We are also confronted with information given to us by Del Mar that seems to conflict with the decision he made to print the articulation found in the first edition parts over the autograph for these measures. When describing Beethoven's proofreading of the first edition parts, Del Mar writes, ‘Beethoven must have checked the proofs carefully as far as the actual notes are concerned … But (as usual) he took much less trouble with articulation, and many slurs are placed vaguely or absent entirely, while staccato is often inconsistent’ (89). It is my opinion that Del Mar lost an interesting opportunity to present Beethoven's autograph articulation of the strokes for the string parts, followed by the contrast of the portato in the winds – a different version than the lyrical portato usually heard in both strings and winds today.
Ultimately, what should take precedence in a decision like this is the performers. What Del Mar has done is present the performers with an unsolved problem. It is easy to imagine that many performers will decide the inconsistency is a mistake. There is no asterisk in the cello part here that could have referred to Del Mar's conclusion on how to play this. It is only found in the middle of an erratic paragraph in the Critical Commentary: ‘but if the difference is taken as applying only to bowing style, not necessarily to length, can be made to work’ (I – 91). Perhaps for many, this half-solution would make the situation more opaque.
Another problematic example appears in the second movement at bar 29. The preceding bar is a violin solo marked fp that leads chromatically into bar 29 where the viola and cello join the violin with their entrance marked p. The Henle Urtext has the violin also marked p again in bar 29, while this dynamic is left out of the Bärenreiter. Consulting the critical notes, I see that Del Mar tells us that while Beethoven marked the violin p in the autograph, he dismisses the marking as ‘superfluous’ and notes that it is not found in the parts or the trio. This is clearly because, technically, the p from the fp marked in bar 28 would still apply for the violin line in bar 29. However, leaving out the marking creates a problem of consistency. There is a similar passage in bar 34 where the violin, viola, and cello have sfp on the downbeat. When the other strings stop playing, the viola continues quavers with the winds and is marked with a repeated p from that moment in the middle of the measure. Beethoven is famous for his repeated dynamic markings, so it is confounding to see this decision and justification that ultimately makes the performer's job more difficult. One could easily imagine the violinist creeping up in dynamic through bar 28 into bar 29 because of the musical nature of the material (one might crescendo through the chromatic line into the next measure). Dynamic markings also signal to a performer that there is a structural as well as dynamic change. There are many performances of the work where the ensemble slows to arrive on the theme in bar 29.Footnote 4 The p marking on bar 29 would surely help performers to understand Beethoven's intentions as well as the structure and possible artistic decisions around it.
Although this edition clearly adds to the academic knowledge around this work, it is problematic for performers. One can easily imagine rehearsal time lost in conversations around these editorial decisions, and in today's world one cannot afford to spend rehearsal time on editorial matters – especially in an ensemble of seven musicians.
