CD back cover and booklet reads: “This edition of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 is edited by Leopold Nowak (1951)”. Note this is not about sound editing, recorded 2013. (Bruckner died before finishing #9.)
How & where would I add this relationship?
Have not seen Leopold Nowak credited in the detailed recordings metadata. Tried the Release Group → add relationship, but “tribute to” etc don’t fit.
Thanks!
I did a quick search of the Documentation for
Relationship Types / Artist-Release
But came up with no return.
It sounds like you’re looking for a Release relationship role something like photographer or cover-art designer.
Nowak should be credited using the “reconstructed by” artist-work relationship. The work for the first movement, for example, is already marked as the 1951 Nowak edition in the disambiguation.
Going meta:
So “edited” here is “reconstructed” which is a sort of “arranged” but with it being implied that the product is as close to the composer’s original intent as the reconstructor can manage?
No, Bruckner himself redacted his symphonies many times, often many years after them already being published. This way different versions of these works exist. They were published at different times by different publishers. No one has “reconstructed” anything and no one but Bruckner himself redacted/edited his works. So, “edition” means (in regards to Bruckner!) which version from when in which publishing house was used for a recording. They can be mixed within one symphony as some of Bruckner’s redactions didn’t improve his composition but rather made them worse. It’s a matter of taste and preference, which edition is used by a conductor.
Edit: Although Bruckner’s 9. Symphony is unfinished, there is still no reconstruction involved, as the unfinished 4. movement is never played. (There have been some reconstruction attempts, but none of them was able to convince musicians and audience.)
Thanks for that Hape54.
How then does “and no one but Bruckner himself redacted/edited his works” fit with “This edition of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 is edited by Leopold Nowak (1951)”?
I’m not 100% sure in Bruckners case, but composers often have a sloppy handwriting (writing musical notes, mind you), or cross out and / or overwrite sections etc. So, sometimes there is some guesswork and wiggle room for interpretation what the composer’s intent was. With even older music, where no autograph has survived, there often are several handwritten copies and / or printed editions of one and the same work. Sometimes ornaments in baroque music were not written out but the performer was expected to know what was common practice then, but for us it is difficult to know how a work was meant to be played. And so on. So, I think it has become clearer why classical music scores are “edited” and not just “published”. But that doesn’t mean anyone is altering the original score at his own discretion. And yet there are many examples where one composer takes the music of another and does exactly that, like Bach’s concertos after Vivaldi. It’s complicated and every work has to be looked at by its own, in order to come as close as possible to the composer’s intention.
Thanks everybody for replies. I just see that the “recording of” relationships all include “ed. Nowak 1951”. Should be sufficient, I guess. Thanks!
recording of:
Symphony no. 9 in D-minor, WAB 109: I. Feierlich, misterioso (1894 version, ed. Nowak 1951) (from 2013-02-17 until 2013-02-21)