Jocelyn Wang replies to me:

>We do, and we should.  No one has any business going into a museum, saying
>"I don't like Van Gogh's use of green in that picture.  I think it should
>be yellow, so I'll change it." Just as it's Van Gogh's decision, and his
>alone, how his art should represent both his soul and his techniques, so
>it is Bach's, Beethoven's, and that of all composers great and not so
>great what form their works should take.

No, but you could say that van Gogh's green would be better blue.  You
don't change the original painting, because you destroy the original
painting.  Music is a lot hardier than canvas.  Actually, painters - and
van Gogh especially - repainted others' canvases.  So you would send van
Gogh to artistic hell because he dared repaint Millet, Corot, and Japanese
artists.  I would agree that the artist's original thoughts must be
available, but I don't think anybody seriously argues that Beethoven as
written/edited for as close to accurate as we can get is unavailable
exactly.  Why not play?

>You and others are free to quibble about the merit of the works, but take
>them as they are they are and don't abridge them.

The second point I'd like to make is that Beethoven's printed scores aren't
necessarily what Beethoven wrote.  "Scholars" (and even I, God help us, can
call myself a scholar) make a best guess, but it's still a guess.  Very
often, scholars indulge in probability.  It's usually done in such a way at
this time, so that's what Beethoven did.  On the other hand, one definition
we like to apply to genius is the ability to come up with the
unconventional and unforeseen.

This really doesn't answer the question.  Why shouldn't these works be
abridged if abridgement improves them and as long as we have the full text?

>...  And if the conductor does not get why Beethoven put in the repeat
>and chooses to ignore it, then he ought to choose something he does get
>and play that instead, or else leave music altogether and become a butcher,
>for that is what he is doing to the music..

Actually, nobody except Beethoven knows why he put in a repeat or whether
a fly dipped its legs in some ink and alighted before a double bar.
Unfortunately, we can't ask Beethoven.

Steve Schwartz