Take care with score downloads!
A couple of weeks ago I downloaded the 2nd violin part of Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, for home practice - my chamber orchestra is performing it next week. At a full rehearsal of the concert programme last night I used this Breitkopf & Härtel download because its layout was such that the page turns were easy, compared with those in the Boosey & Hawkes edition we had all been working with.
Halfway through the first movement of the Serenade I was mystified to find myself suddenly several bars ahead of the rest of the orchestra - with me it's rather more likely to be the opposite ;). I stopped and waited a few seconds for them to catch up, and then proceeded to the end of the movement without further incident. It seemed at the time that some of the music was missing.
When I returned home I compared the two editions. The Breitkopf & Härtel edition of 1920 that I had downloaded from IMSLP was apparently lacking 8 measures from the first movement, 8 measures which were in the orchestra's Boosey & Hawkes edition of 1947. I hadn't noticed this during home practice because that passage didn't have significant problems, so I didn't pay much attention to it.
What went wrong? I assumed the Breitkopf & Härtel edition was fairly authentic, as one does, and therefore had no hesitation in downloading it. I have now noticed that the orchestra's Boosey & Hawkes edition was edited by a Harold Perry, who would seem to have added in those 8 measures which are absent from the Breitkopf & Härtel edition of 1920.
The 8 measures "missing" from the Breitkopf & Härtel start, in the Boosey & Hawkes edition, 20 measures after rehearsal number 8 in the first movement. The first 3 measures of those 8 are identical to the 3 measures starting 8 measures later (i.e. the 8-bar section that is in Breitkopf & Härtel). Confusion was therefore not unexpected, and I am glad it didn't happen in performance - on the day I could so easily have given that download to a colleague who had forgotten to bring their own music!
Replies
Lesson learned: compare the two editions.
I've been back to IMSLP to look at the other alternatives. The original Jurgenson edition of 1881 does not have those extra 8 bars that are in the Boosey & Hawkes edition (still in copyright, which is why it isn't in IMSLP). However, a 2009 Crreative Commons edition on IMSLP does have those extra 8 bars.
My conclusion is that the Breitkopf & Härtel edition follows the original edition, and the modern Creative Commons edition is based on the Boosey & Hawkes edition of 1947.
It is possible that the "missing" 8 bars were indeed in Tchaikovsky's original manuscript but were accidentally omitted from the first edition, a mistake which was perpetuated until perhaps the middle of the last century when someone (Boosey & Hawkes?) checked out the autograph and inserted the missing bars where they should have been in the first place.
Of interest, there is now an urtext of the Franck Sonata (though it is on IMSLP).
Henle has an excellent urtext of the Franck Sonata.
When playing with others you should always make sure you use the same edition.
Especially if Kalmus is involved!
Recently downloaded parts at IMSLP for the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 2 ("Little Russian"), and then downloaded the Russian Critical Edition score. Whoah!!!!!! Several HUNDRED measures different!!!!! One is based on the original performance. The other was a revision years later. The piece had been almost entirely re-thought! I had a H*** of a time in the first rehearsal!!!!!
@Malcolm: In the case of Kalmus, they originally bought up music whose copyright had expired (to use as "masters" for the printing process) and just mass produced them for sale. The publishers, whose expired music they used as originals, often had many errors included in those ancient editions. Those same companies had often corrected the errors in later, more modern (i.e., still in copyright), printings and editions. As knowledge of the difference between copyrighted and public domain works became more common knowledge among musicians, Kalmus scores which had not been "edited" became fodder for mass copying, and Kalmus started losing money. They started producing modern "edited" editions so that copying those "modern" editions would be illegal. Unfortunately, even in their supposedly "edited" version errors galore still occur. (Just finished a concert last night of the Wieniawski Violin Concerto No. 2 using a score and parts produced by them freshly engraved and researched edition by Kalmus in 2003, edited by Howard K. Wolf, with wrong notes, missing notes. GRRR!)
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March 23, 2017 at 11:55 PM · You never know...In my case, the correction was downloaded. I found 5 measures missing from a Bach Canon in a Fiddle Sessions publication. Fortunately I compared the Fiddle Sessions version to the original Bach manuscript online; it looks like the 5-bar cut was made to fit the Canon on one page in the Fiddle Sessions edition.