Musical notation is a most ambiguous way of recording musical intentions. Asa form of “shorthand,” it is, after all, rather good. Evencenturies later musicians interested in recreating what composers intendedto express to their own contemporaries can still make profitable use of it,despite not only changes in instruments but also wholly new socialconditions—circumstances that have transformed once contemporaryartworks into “period pieces” in the context of a laterrepertoire. But this shorthand can also be misleading for the modernmusician interested in recreating “authenticity” of expressionin ways unforeseen by the composer. Unless we are familiar with contemporaryand local conventions, and with the idiosyncratic notational habits of theindividual composer, essential indications in the written score can bedangerously misleading indeed. Basic symbols, especially performanceindications, may have had a meaning different from what we are taughttoday.

The starting point for our discussion, of course, is theUrtext edition. It is hardly good news that criticalscholarly editions, including the great-composer neueAusgaben launched after World War II (several of them stillunfinished), are already seriously outdated. The reasons for this areobvious. Since the 1950s the “philosophy” of scholarlyeditions that appear alongside good commercial editions—so-calledpractical Urtext editions—and individual performingscores based on a single source has changed radically. Yet editorialguidelines for an entire series cannot easily be substantially modified.Moreover, in producing the “impeccable” text of a scholarlyedition the (defensive) attitude of the editor not infrequently takespriority over the interests of the performer. Add to this the fact that theeditors of these volumes are not usually professional musicians but ratherscholars—musicologists—leaders in their field, perhaps, butoften with old-fashioned tastes.

It is no wonder that among the best performers the degree of respect forscholarly editions varies considerably from one player to the other.Although some pianists were willing to restudy Mozart’s sonatas whenthey were finally published in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (andeven to consult the facsimile edition of the recently discovered autographscore of the C-Minor Sonata, K. 475/457), others prefer a differentUrtext edition.