A new critical edition of Nikos Skalkottas’s violin concerto

Her academic qualifications include a PhD from King's College, London; a MMus in Music Theory and Analysis and a MMus in Historical Musicology from Goldsmiths, University of London; a BMus from the Aristotle University of

Thessaloniki. Her teaching includes lecturing positions at Kingston University, City University London, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Canterbury Christ Church University, The Open University, and The Aegean University.

She has published work on musicological topics and the music of Nikos Skalkottas, and she has authored The Life and Twelve-Note Music of Nikos Skalkottas (Ashgate, 2011), and edited Polish Music Since 1945 (Musica Iagellonica, 2013). She is the co-editor (with Costas Tsougras and Petros Vouvaris) of the volume, Perspectives on Greek Musical Modernism (Routledge, 2019), and she is the editor of the Critical Edition of Nikos Skalkottas's Violin Concerto, published by Universal Edition (Vienna).

Доктор мистецтвознавства Ева Манцурані - педагог дисципліни «музичний аналіз» та практик магістрів з нейролінгвістичного програмування.

Її академічна кваліфікація включає звання доктора наук Королівського коледжу, Лондон; Магістра музики з музичної теорії та аналізу та Магістра музики з історичного музикознавства Лондонського університету Голдсмітс, а також магістра університету Аристотеля в Салоніках. Її педагогічна діяльність включає посади лектора в Кінгстонському університеті, Міському університеті Лондона, Королівському Валлійському коледжі музики і драми, Кентерберійському університеті Церкви Христа, Відкритому університеті та Егейському університеті.

Ева Манцурані опублікувала власні дослідження «Життя та дванадцятитонова система Нікоса Скалкотаса» (Ashgate, 2011) та «Польська музика, починаючи від 1945 року» («Musica Iagellonica», 2013). Разом з Костасом Цуграсом та Петросом Вуварісом Ева Манцурані є співредактором одного з томів видання «Перспективи грецького музичного модернізму» (Routledge, 2019) і редактором критичного видання «Концерт для скрипки Нікоса Скалкотаса», опублікованого виданням Universal Edition (Відень).

Introduction

In his unpublished essay `The School of Modern Composers', the Greek composer Nikos Skalkottas (1904 - 1949) states that, `Every composer can have his own school [...] each [school] has its own form, carries its own name.' (Skalkottas Archive). And true to his belief he created his very own, private `school', one characterized by an unusual stylistic breadth. Throughout his career he explored and integrated several contrasting musical idioms and styles (tonality, atonality, dodecaphonism, neoclassicism and folklorism), and traditional and avant-garde elements effortlessly coexist in his works. Skalkottas's compositional development is not linear and diachronic, characterized by separate stylistic periods, but inclusive and synchronic, with simultaneous composition of atonal, twelve-note and tonal works. At the beginning of his career he was immersed in the European contemporary music scene for a short period, albeit rather marginally as Arnold Schoenberg's student. The later development of his twelve-note technique occurred in complete isolation from Schoenberg and the European avant-garde. Because of the hostility he faced in Greece, and in part because of his own reticence, he never really fitted into any of the prevailing Greek musical traditions. He was a misfit, a young, iconoclastic composer, who had found his own musical language at a time when art music in Greece was still trying to find its own identity and largely reflected the conservative and deeply nationalistic ideals of the political and cultural environment.

Nearly all of Skalkottas's works were unpublished and, apart from a handful of compositions, unperformed during his lifetime. The Violin Concerto (1938) was one of those works neither performed nor published during Skalkottas's lifetime, and the autograph sources remained unedited and in manuscript form. Similar to the other posthumously published works, it contained several copyists' and engravers' errors, misreadings of the sources, and a liberal amount of unattributed interpretative performance instructions that were not Skalkottas's own.

A new Critical Edition of both the Concerto for Violin with full orchestra, and its version for Piano with Violin, edited by Eva Mantzourani and published by Universal Editions, with the title `Konzert fur Violine und Orchester' (2020), aims to rectify this state of affairs. It provides an authoritative performance text, based on meticulous study of all known sources and prepared in accordance with modern editorial and text-critical principles.

First Edition of Nikos Skalkottas's Violin Concerto (Universal Editions, 1964)

My research into the publication history of the first edition of Skalkottas's Violin Concerto, has revealed that the editing was done primarily by the composer-conductor Walter Goehr (who facilitated the publication of a handful of Skalkottas's works in the 1950s, and was heading the editorial team at UE in Vienna), together with the Greek musicologist John G. Papaioannou. Papaioannou had the final say; he was involved at all stages of the production and was responsible for correcting the proofs. Papaioannou had hired the young Greek composer Theodore Antoniou to correct any mistakes made by the copyist. According to Antoniou, `Goehr wrote several letters with suggestions and corrections, mostly simplifying difficult passages, most of which, however, were unnecessary [... while] the corrections for the strings especially were very wrong'. However, Antoniou, who was still a student at the time, did not feel comfortable challenging Goehr or Papaioannou, so he didn't say anything (Personal communication with T. Antoniou).

Production record material at the Universal Edition (UE) Historical Archive in Vienna, and surviving correspondence of John Papaioannou with Dr Alfred Kalmus, the Director of the London branch of UE (at the Music Library of Greece “Lilian Voudouri”), indicates that by December 1960 UE had received the engraved score of the Violin Concerto, a few days after Walter Goehr's death on 4th December. The engraving was done in Athens by A. Petrakides. Subsequently, several UE freelance, copyeditors worked on Petrakides score. The edited material produced in a hurry in order to be sent to Isaac Stern who expressed an interest to perform it, but eventually he didn't, was used for the `world premiere' of Skalkottas's Violin Concerto, sometime in 1962 by the Orchestre de la Suisse-Romande (Geneva), conducted by George Barati, with Lorand Fenyves playing the solo violin. It was also used for the first recorded performance of the piece, which took place in Hamburg on 14 May 1962. It was played by the NDR-Sinfonieorchester (Hamburg), conducted by Michael Gielen, with Tibor Varga playing the solo violin. Two years later, in 1964, the official first edition of the Violin Concerto was published by Universal Edition (London). The original, engraved score, produced in Athens, was used uncorrected with a title and a plate number added, but without the editor's name or the original engraver's signature.

The Art of Editing and the new Critical Edition

As James Grier (1996, 2) argues, `editing is the art of interpretation', as it `consists of a series of choices, educated, critically informed choices'. Editing, moreover, consists of the interaction between the authority of the composer, as transmitted in the sources, and the authority of the editor in the course of evaluating and interpreting those sources.' (Ibid.). `Editing, therefore, comprises a balance between these two authorities.' (Ibid., 3). However, many music editors express a reluctance to address the issue of their own authority, and some actively suppress it in their editions. Moreover, not all editors are as frank with their audience as they might be, or transparent with their editorial choices when it comes to correcting errors and other editorial interventions. For example, with interpretative or performing editions (particularly those produced during the 19th and 20th centuries), which include editorial performing instructions, `the chief problem lies not in the addition of such instructions, but in that the performer/editor expends little effort to ensure that the printed text is faithful to the testimony of the sources.' (Grier 1996, 152). And this is exactly what has happened in the first edition of Skalkottas's Violin Concerto, in which there is no indication anywhere of the editor's name. Furthermore, the score is inundated with performance instructions and dynamics, and there is no indication of the editorial interventions, or an accompanying Critical Commentary to explain the editorial decisions taken in this edition.

The preparation of an edition entails a host of decisions made on the basis of the editor's critical perception of the work and its text (Grier 1996, 174). Furthermore, in the editing process, the authority of the editor is affected and limited by the economic institutions through which the sources are produced and disseminated. For example, in Skalkottas's case, the choice of the piece and the type of edition I wanted to produce, was influenced considerably by protracted negotiations between myself (the editor), and the publisher (the institution), who had the leverage of its support behind the project. My intention was to produce a pure, historico-critical edition, based on academic standards and theoretical frameworks. The publisher - that is, the Heads of Editing, Marketing and Promotions - wanted a commercially-viable, performing edition, with some supplementary Critical Notes. They were not willing to publish a score that would stay in a library and be relevant perhaps only to theorists and musicologists. And, quite rightly, their valid argument was that the performers need to know what to play, not what's in the sources, or what the editor has decided to include in the score. The place for this information is the Critical Apparatus (Grier 1996, 168). Consequently, I produced the following:

1. A Critical Edition of the full orchestral score, indicating all editorial interventions, together with a Critical Commentary and Textual Notes. This is being published both as a conducting score (Dirigierpartitur UE 36 318), and as a study score. (Studienpartitur UE 36 117).

2. A performing version of the instrumental parts, with no indication of editorial intervention (Orchestermaterial UE 36 319).

3. A Piano reduction with the Solo Violin part (Klavierauszug mit eingelegter Solovioline UE36 118).

The first priority for a critical edition is clarity in the presentation of information to the user (Grier 1996, 156). So long as editors inform their audience of their policies and procedures, and apply their system of notification consistently, they cannot be accused of misleading the user. In a Critical Edition, the Apparatus constitutes a commentary on the printed text (Feder 1987, 140-151), and its primary purpose is to report those readings that affected the editor's deliberations on the final reading chosen for the printed text (Grier 1996, 173).

In the new Critical Edition of Skalkottas's Violin Concerto the musical text and the Apparatus appear as follows:

• Preface

• Introduction

• The musical texts

• Critical Commentary

• Editorial Practice

• Textual Notes

• Editorial Additions

The Preface and Introduction establishes the aim of the critical edition, the historical context of the piece, and the publication history of the first edition.

The Musical Texts include the orchestral score and the Piano Reduction with Solo Violin. There are also performing material, such as the solo violin and the orchestral parts. The performers play from a clean text; if they want to find out about the sources, variant readings and whether the performance indications are Skalkottas's own or my editorial additions, they can refer to the scholarly presentation of the full score and the accompanying commentary. In the Piano Reduction with Solo Violin, follows Skalkottas's own reduction, which is a short score.

The Critical Commentary includes: The Description, and Evaluation of the Sources, and a discussion of their classification and use. The principal sources for this new Critical Edition of Skalkottas's Violin Concerto, each identified with the siglum (Aut), are the following:

i) Aut-A: Autograph full orchestral score (Partitur).

ii) Aut-B1: Autograph draft of the short score (piano reduction with solo violin).

iii) Aut-B2: Autograph fair copy of the short score (piano reduction with solo violin).

iv) Aut-C: Autograph fair copy of the solo violin part.

Other Material - Secondary sources, include:

i) UE-0: `Working' copy of the original Greek engraving of the full orchestral score with editorial corrections - Universal Edition (undated).

ii) UE-1: Full orchestral score (Partitur) of the first edition - Universal Edition (1964).

iii) UE-M/Solo-Vl.: Manuscript copy by an unknown copyist of the solo violin part of the first edition - Universal Edition (London) (1964).

iv) UE-1/[part]: Set of orchestral parts of the first edition (for example, UE-1/Fl) - Universal Edition (1964); (partly engraved, partly handwritten).

Then, follows a detailed description and evaluations of the primary sources. Although there is no record to indicate the compositional chronology of these autograph scores, given the quality of the handwriting, the sketchy and incomplete nature of Aut-B1, and the care taken with the presentation of Aut- B2, it is likely that Aut-B1 was written before Aut-A, while Aut-B2 and Aut- C were written/copied out together at a later stage as a performing version of the short score. In the editing of the piece, Walter Goehr used Aut-A as his principal source, as UE-0/UE-1 repeat the same variant notes and other performance indications of the Aut-A only. Goehr, also had Aut-B2, which was used for the preparation of the reduction for Isaac Stern. The unknown copyist of the solo violin part (UE-M/Solo-Vl.) must have used Aut-B2 (and perhaps Aut-C) as his principal source, since this was the copy sent to UE during the publishing process; there are several identical variant readings of notes and/or dynamics and other performance indications between the two sources, which are different from Aut-A and even Aut-B1.

Of the secondary sources, it is worth mentioning the UE-0: Undated `working' copy of the original Greek engraving of the full orchestral score (done in Athens by A. Petrakides) with editorial corrections by the Universal Edition copyeditors Schonberg and Becker. The plate number is hand-written on the first page only. Neither the title of the piece nor the name of the composer appears in this version. The corrections, mainly wrong accidentals, clefs and rhythms, as well as missing or misplaced dynamics, have been made in red pencil. It is notable that none of these suggested corrections have been transferred to the final printed score (UE-1). The editor of UE-0/UE-1 did not appear to standardize the readings between the full orchestral score and the solo violin part.

The Editorial Practice presents my (the editor's) editorial method and justifies the approach adopted in this edition. This section deals with Notation; Placement of dynamics and other agogic indications; Accidentals; Triplet markings; Notation for Timpani; Unison and Divisi.

The Textual Notes presents and notates all variant readings in all sources. It also indicates any substantive changes made through conjectural emendation by giving the sources' readings that felt to be corrupt and in need of emendation. In order to establish the best reading of certain notes/passages, apart from autograph source similarity and, where appropriate, passage repetition, Skalkottas's dodecaphonic technique has also been taken into consideration.