John Smyth wrote:

>Some ghosts from the past reveal their thoughts on the color green:
>
>   "Should the Sonata not be suitable in London, you could omit the
>   largo and begin straight away with the fugue--or you could use the
>   first mov't and then the adagio, and then the scherzo--and omit
>   entirely the fourth mov't with the largo and allegro risoluto.
>   ...(Beethoven on the Hammerklavier)
>
>   "Variation when passages are repeated is indispensable." (CPE Bach in
>   a forward to his "Sechs Sonaten fur Clavier")
>
>   "The symphony went magnifique and had the greatest success.  There
>   were forty violins; the wind instruments were doubled, there were
>   ten violas, eight cellos, and six bassoons." (Mozart, {not Stokowski!},
>   in a letter to his father)

All of the above illustrate well the "flexible interplay" that existed
between the composer and performers at the indicated times.  I believe that
composers understood and endorsed the process, within certain boundaries.
Notice that there is no mention of reorchestration (beyond the doublings
mentioned by Mozart), or adding or deleting measures.  Embellishments and
divisions never, to my knowledge, changed the underlying harmonic or phrase
structure of a work--the only thing that comes close to that is the
cadenza, which, it is true, does add music that is not the composer's own.
But by providing for a cadenza the composer gives in effect a "licence" to
the performer.  Beethoven in the well-known case of the Emperor concerto
specifically in the score takes that licence away.

I might comment further on the issue of the Hammerklavier (Op.  106)
sonata-- Beethoven was a reasonably practical man who earned his living
composing.  It's not unreasonable to suggest that he sometimes gave
permission for certain rearrangements like those mentioned in the hope
of making a work more saleable.  He might have done this even though he
preferred things be played as written.  Therefore the possibility that such
considerations might have been at least partly responsible for his remarks
must be taken into account, and do not conclusively prove that he either
expected or endorsed the practice.

The real problem is not our ignorance that performances often varied from
the score in times past, but in knowing to what extent and in what ways
we may be justified in changing the score's directions today.  When does
one move beyond "free interpretation" and into out-and-out tampering?
Weingartner's changes to Beethoven's 9th, which largely involve some added
dynamics and a few octave doublings, to me represent a little of both.  Had
he confined himself to simply writing them in his own score and calling for
them from his orchestra, that would seem like interpretation.  But adding
them and publishing the 9th as edited by Weingartner would be something
else.  Buelow's Beethoven Sonatas are almost everywhere nowadays considered
egregious 19th-century attempts to "improve" on Beethoven on the theory
that had Beethoven had a more modern piano to work on, he would have
written it that way, or worse, Beethoven "surely meant" a crescendo
here--why? Because the music demands it.  The only good thing one can say
about these editions is that most of the time, the reader knows what has
been added.  But one can never be sure without an Urtext at one's disposal.

Chris Bonds