Tim Dickinson gives three reasons for buying complete editions of works by
one composer following my statement.

>>...  As I said before amongst these ranks, I cannot think of any valid
>>reason (except maybe that you might think it looks highbrow in your CD
>>stand) to buy ANY complete edition just because it's complete.
>
>VALID REASON #1: MONEY

Agreed Tim, most valid reason. My point with respect to this reason:
suppose you are a beginner in the Bach cantata area, what seems more
reasonable of the following two alternatives: buy a discounted one disc
excellent performance of two or three well known cantatas (and they ARE
available; I'm sure Don would know of many examples) OR buy the 60 discs
Brilliant edition of all of them? You'll get relatively more cantatas for
your money in the second case, BUT you'll spend more money! I will not go
into polemics on this, but I'm pretty convinced opinions on that may be
divided.

>VALID REASON #2: TIME
>They are a convenient way to quickly obtain a given repertoire. You do
>not have any reason to expect to improve your results through strategic
>purchases without taking time to do research. This time is not always
>available and/or some may prefer to instead spend it listening.

Agreed again. But I think that's a reason that is valid only with some of
the more fanatic music lovers like us on this list. Also, again, what's the
rush? Discounts will always be there and Mozart will not go away. Most of
us will have the quickly obtained repertoire waiting for us to get round to
it for a long time, because we have still to work our way through all the
other quickly obtained repertoire.

>Sometimes I'll buy a complete set to gain initial exposure to some music
>for one or both of the above reasons before zeroing in on other recordings.

Can you give a specific example where you did that and can you elaborate on
the advantage that it gave you?

>VALID REASON #3: ARTISTIC PERSPECTIVE
>Many of us collect multiple recordings of the same music. For such
>collectors, it can be desirable to obtain a given artist's perspective
>on a corner of the repertoire.

I cannot see the value of this reason in the context of our discussion
of the good or bad of acquiring COMPLETE editions, especially since  all
complete editions I can think of are assembled from different artists'
performances (as is i.e. the Philips Mozart edition that was under
discussion). It would have been more interesting if you had pointed
out how the contents of  e.g. this Philips edition reflects the rather
mainstream/conservative policy of the Philips record company or how the
complete Beethoven edition of Deutsche Grammophon in the 70's reflected
the influence of Herbert von Karajan in the record industry.

>There you go, three valid reasons and I never even had to scratch my head.
>All offered in the spirit of public service....

Thank you. With compliments returned.

Just wonder what Sergiu Celibidache or Carlos Kleiber would say about this
discussion...

Greetings, Jos, who is longing to go back now to his recently bought
magnificent but INCOMPLETE budget issue of Bartok's music for piano and
orchestra buy Geza Anda and that wonderful but underrated Ferenc Fricsay.