by Anna Alberati
Published on the occasion of the second centenary of the birth of Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin (1.3.1810-17.10.1849)
In this Library, where the most frequently encountered written music is Baroque, from the early seventeenth century to the first half of the eighteenth century, among the musical sources there is also a certain number of nineteenth-century works, among which there are several compositions created for the romantic instrument par excellence: the piano. This is due to the recent acquisition of the Archive of Giovanni Sgambati (1841-1914), a musician of considerable importance in Italy in the second half of the nineteenth century. A pianist of precocious talent, he settled in Rome in 1860, quickly acquiring a good reputation for his way of playing and for the nature of the programs he performed in his concerts. His favorite composers were Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, as well as Bach and Handel, of whom he was an excellent interpreter.
Giovanni Sgambati
About to go to Germany to perfect his piano studies, in 1862 Sgambati had the opportunity to meet Franz Liszt, during the latter’s second stay in Rome (1861-70). The Hungarian composer in fact stayed in Rome until 1870 and his various homes became meeting points for numerous Italian and foreign artists, and especially for young students. For Sgambati too, the relationship with Liszt was particularly important, both for his artistic life and for his own career as a musician and composer.
In addition to performing a large series of concerts throughout Europe, Sgambati devoted himself assiduously to teaching the instrument, so much so that he promoted the birth of the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, of which he was the true architect, alongside the violinist Ettore Pinelli. In fact, the birth of the first nucleus of the music school is due to Sgambati, who in 1868 obtained the concession of a space at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia where he could hold a free piano course reserved for deserving and less well-off students, an example followed immediately by Ettore Pinelli who in turn established a free violin course. In 1877, the Liceo Musicale Romano was born, while in 1893 Sgambati was appointed artistic director of the Società Filarmonica Romana and until the last years of his life he continued to teach piano and to promote musical initiatives in the city of Rome.
complete works of Chopin Russian edition
Along with numerous compositions by Sgambati himself, the Sgambati Archive contains numerous sources of music by various authors that the musician had studied, performed and loved. Among these is also Fryderyk Chopin, of whom Sgambati owned two editions of complete works: the French one, printed in Paris by Schonenberger in 1860, which was the second publication of Chopin’s complete works, and that of Pëtr Ivanovič Jurgenson, printed in Moscow in the years 1873-76, in 6 volumes, edited by Karl Klindworth. The Russian edition was mercilessly panned by the Italian musicologist Gastone Belotti (1920 -1985), one of the most important Chopin scholars, with the following words: “With the aim of making Chopin’s music say more than the author intended, he modified, altered, bastardized Chopin’s writing to the point that in some passages it is almost not even recognizable; it is an edition to be avoided, but unfortunately it was taken as a model by many revisers in the following 50 years”.
As far as Italy is concerned, Chopin is one of the composers who was immediately known and loved: during his life his compositions were already published in Italy, at the same time or shortly after the first editions printed in France, Germany and England. It was the Lucca publishing house, in Milan, that first printed some of Chopin’s compositions, already in 1835; subsequently they were all published around 1870, printed by Ricordi.
A very singular aspect of Chopin’s piano literature seems to be the history of the printed editions of all of Chopin’s works, as can be seen from the statements of the illustrious scholar Gastone Belotti, whose careful critical examination published by him in the Utet Encyclopedic Dictionary of Music and Musicians is reported in full [1985]:
“There is no musically significant country, there is no prestigious publishing house, that does not have one or more editions of Chopin’s complete works:
1. The first edition was the English one by Wessel Co., London 1853, in 71 volumes, which was based on the first editions printed by the same house during the composer’s lifetime.
2. They were followed by the Schonenberger edition, Paris 1860, in 12 volumes,
3. and that of S. Richault, Paris 1860, in 12 volumes, which availed itself of the collaboration of Th. Tellefsen (who was Chopin’s student for 3 years).
4. In Italy the first complete edition is that of Francesco Lucca, Milan circa 1862, in 80 volumes, and since it includes all the posthumous works published by Julian Fontana (excluding op. 74), his can be considered the most complete of the editions that preceded the great undertaking of Breitkopf Härtel.
5. This can be said for the Polish edition by Gebethner, Warsaw 1863, in 3 volumes, published with the permission of the composer’s family.
All the editions listed so far are based in one way or another on the original editions and, despite numerous errors, oversights, omissions, sometimes due to the manuscripts themselves, can be considered as fairly faithful to the composer’s wishes.
6. This cannot be said of the edition by P.I. Jurgenson, Moscow 1873-76, in 6 volumes, edited by Karl Klindworth, who republished it with Bote Bock of Berlin in 3 volumes: with the aim of making Chopin’s music say more than the author intended, he modified, altered, bastardized Chopin’s writing to the point that in some passages it is almost not even recognizable; it is an edition to be avoided, but unfortunately it was taken as a model by many revisers in the following 50 years.
7. Shortly afterwards came out the great edition by Breitkopf Härtel, Leipzig 1878-80, the greatest effort made by nineteenth-century publishing in this field, which in 14 volumes collected Chopin’s entire works based on his first original editions, on the manuscripts from which they had been taken, entrusting the work of revision to an impressive editorial body which included, among others, Johannes Brahms, Auguste Franchomme and Franz Liszt; it is an acceptable edition, although it does not fail to raise problems, even significant ones, on the correctness of some texts.
8. At the same time, the edition by F. Kistner, Leipzig 1879, in 17 volumes, edited by Karol Mikuli, a pupil of Chopin, who availed himself of the collaboration of F. Müller, his fellow pupil, was published.
9. the edition by C.F. Peters, Leipzig 1879, in 12 volumes, edited by H. Scholtz, who used some copies of the first editions belonging to R. de Konneritz and G. Mathias, Chopin’s students, with some corrections by the author marked: despite some valuable contributions, overall these are publications which offer little assurance regarding the authenticity of the text.
From this time on [1879] the main sources of each corrected edition, that is the manuscripts and the first editions, were abandoned, with the revisers preferring to use the previous editions by Breitkopf Härtel and the revisions by Mikuli, Scholtz and Klindworth, mostly tampering with them, thus moving further and further away from the letter and spirit of Chopin’s writing.
10. As an example of this type of edition, we can mention the one by Ricordi, Milan 1925, edited by Attilio Brugnoli (following the editions with revisions by Stefano Golinelli in 1879-80 and by Beniamino Cesi in 1901), which, having taken as its model above all the revisions by Klindworth and Mikuli, is among the furthest from the authentic texts.
11. During the First World War, the Durand C.ie edition edited by Claude Debussy was published in Paris. He aimed to provide a text as authentic as possible, but had to work very quickly …; nevertheless, his edition can still be considered useful, especially because it reveals many aspects of Debussy’s interpretation.
12. About ten years later, again in Paris, the Salabert edition edited by Alfred Cortot began to appear, which was very incorrect and sometimes overbearing in its texts; some teachers considered it useful for the exercises that Cortot prefaced or annotated to the majority of his works in order to facilitate the execution of the more difficult passages.
13. The Oxford University Press edition, London 1932, edited by Édouard Ganche, is of a new conception. It was based on a collection of the first French editions that belonged to Jane W. Stirling, a student of Chopin, who preserved numerous autographed corrections by the master; it thus went back to the origins, with a few more corrections, but without solving the problems that the first editions themselves presented, and creating some others; it is nevertheless the best edition of its time.
14. Closely linked to the previous one, although incomplete, is the Curci edition, Milan 1946-54, in 11 volumes, edited by Alfredo Casella and Guido Agosti; it is valuable even if it reproduces the merits and defects of the model.
15. The first complete edition carried out according to scientific criteria is that of Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, Krakow 1949-64, in 21 volumes, edited on behalf of the Instytut imienia Fryderyka Chopina of Warsaw by I. Paderewsky, L. Bronarski and J. Turczyński: the edition was carried out on the basis of autographs, copies, first editions, also taking into account the best revisions and some copies of first editions belonging to Chopin’s students and which preserve the author’s marks and corrections; provided with an exhaustive commentary, it is the greatest effort made in the field of Chopin publishing.
16. The Henle edition of Munich, edited by Ewald Zimmermann, has been in the process of being edited since 1962 and is the edition that presents the most authentic texts available today in complete editions.”
It is now necessary to underline how for Chopin a question is particularly evident that actually involves all the musical sources of any composer: the problem of the original sources, of the authentic musical text. Before any question relating to the performance, for any performing musician the problem of having a text close or as close as possible to the composer’s will is of extreme importance: and here the discussion of musical editions opens. In the historical period that goes from the Baroque to the Romantic period, different types of musical editions have been published: today, instead, the original text, called Urtext, has established itself, which should clarify every question and resolve every doubt of performance, but in reality the problem is more complicated.
Before the nineteenth century, in fact, there were no particular editorial requirements regarding musical editions: except for printing errors, the publisher printed exactly and directly what the musician wrote. Then, in the first decade of the nineteenth century, the first editions of music from the past arrived, in which an attempt was made to adapt the text to the stylistic needs and tastes of the time. This indirect relationship between publisher and composer, combined with didactic needs, generated a high number of heavy corrections for a series of musical editions in which the original text, to be more understandable, more easily performable, more suited to “modern” taste, had been “enriched” by additions regarding dynamics, agogics, pedaling, phrasing. Several authors, editors of many musical editions such as Czerny, Moscheles, Tausig, Bülow, Riemann, Sauer, Longo were animated by this didactic spirit, but also by entirely personal criteria, which they applied without restraint.
Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, however, in correspondence with the publication of the first volumes of the Bach Gesellschaft (the first important Urtext in the history of music), a different respect for classical musical texts also began to assert itself. An intense activity of interpretation of the text continued for decades “in editions legitimized by an interpretative tradition codified by legendary figures of concert music who were little versed in stylistic differentiation, where a unique performing manner prevails, an expressive style situated between romanticism and impressionism, to which Bach, Chopin and Debussy can adapt: beauty of sound, musicality, sensitivity, but also generic phrasing, random pedaling, fidelity to the text subordinated to temperamental motivations; at times fascinating with the great interpreters, this style increasingly reveals its untimeliness”. 
This was emphasized a few years ago by musicologist and professor Riccardo Risaliti, who however also pointed out the difficulty for many composers to have a sure and completely reliable source. He therefore recommended studying all the various musical sources of an author, manuscript and printed: the autographs, the drafts, the annotations, the corrected proofs, the original editions revised by the author himself, according to a variable hierarchy, supported by testimonies, letters, documents. In particular, he highlighted how Chopin represented a true borderline case in this field, and was a composer “for whom it will never be possible to define a definitive text, both because of the way he worked (various collaborators in copying, little attention in proofreading), and because of his own creative conception, for which he considered his compositions a work in progress subject to continuous modifications.”
In fact, playing Chopin is one of the most difficult operations that a pianist has to face: it is a difficult task because Chopin played his music and taught it, but he never wrote anything in relation to his aesthetic, pianistic and didactic conception. Furthermore, even if the musician had a large number of students, for various reasons a true “Chopin piano school” was never born. The most modern “Chopinology”, in reality, has operated in a very correct way: many examples of the first editions of Chopin’s music have been considered, belonging to the students, friends, and the composer’s sister, with all the dynamic, agogic and phrasing indications marked by him to perform his own compositions, a large amount of information, data and suggestions has also been accumulated.
The task of pianists is to take this into account, because Chopin was not only one of the greatest pianists in the history of music, but he was, as has been said, the poet of the piano.
Chopin’s works cards owned by Casanatense