Just this last, and I'm done.

Len Fehskens:

>It is unquestionably the case that there is nothing stopping anyone
>from revising an artist's work as they see fit.  It happens all the time.
>Composers did it routinely, e.g., the orchestration of Pictures at an
>Exhibition.  I have no problem with such editions when they are presented
>honestly as someone else's take on an original work.  Where I start to feel
>uncomfortable is when someone asserts, without supporting evidence, that
>their edition is what the original artist "really intended" or "would have
>intended".

But you get that with *any* scholarly edition.  Someone has decided exactly
that.  So you have that problem just about every time you perform the score
of a composer who's not around to tell you otherwise.  It's been my
experience as a performer, at any rate, that most of the composers I've
worked with have a more provisional view of their own scores.  They're
tinkering and trying out new stuff, rather than insisting on an unvarying
lithograph.  Other composers insist on the notes.

>I'm sorry, all I know of what the artist intended is what the artist left.

Actually, you don't even know what the artist left is what he intended.
You can't, probably, read minds.  Better to leave the question of intention
aside altogether.

>In the case of repeats, if the repeat was notated, and there's no
>indication that it's optional, then it is what the artist intended.
>Anything else is alteration.  Is that alteration "illegitimate" or
>corruption? Well, now we cross the threshold into opinion, not fact.

Exactly.  On a mini-discussion on this topic off-list, someone brought
up the point that every time a wrong note is played, you can condemn the
performance on the same grounds as omitting the repeat, in which case you
consign to artistic Erebus some of the greatest performances of all:
Schnabel's Beethoven, Furtwaengler's Beethoven, Horenstein's Mahler,
and so on.  If we consider, as Stirling Newberry points out, the letter
to the exclusion of everything else, we probably kill the work, since
music doesn't exist unless it's performed.  How do you decide whether
a particular performance is valid if it differs from the score in
its treatment of repeats - say it follows some and not others or that
it follows none? Why not do so in the same way you decide about any
performance, including one absolutely scrupulous? You compare the choice
made to the choices possible.  It might turn out that the performer has
chosen better than the composer.  At least, I see no reason why that's a
non-starter.

Steve Schwartz