The elusive first editions
Let us begin from an attempt to define what ‘first editions’ actually are in relation to Chopin’s music. Guided by the everyday meaning of the term ‘first edition’, i.e. the earliest publication of a given work, we could imagine Chopin’s first editions as a slim set comprising one editorial unit (the earliest one published) for each work. However, such a definition, logical and precise as it is, would prove quite useless for Chopin researchers. This follows both from the manner in which Chopin published his works and from general mechanisms of functioning of 19th century publishing firms.
The term ‘edition’ encompasses all the copies printed with the use of the same printing materials; obviously, by ‘printing materials’ we do not mean ink or paper but matrices, that is metal or stone plates on which the image of the score was fixed with the employment of various techniques to be reproduced in the printing process. A single impression, the so-called print run, was usually quite tiny, and additional impressions were made when the demand for the publication turned out to be considerable. Subsequent impressions might contain corrections of errors noticed in the first impression, which gave composers a chance to introduce small but often vital improvements. The matrices were durable enough to be used in that system for decades. As a result, editions usually had several print runs (most often two or three) differing in text details. For instance, in the copy of the Paris edition of Sonata in B flat minor Op. 35 offered by Chopin to Maria de Scherbatoff, the 3rd movement, the famous March, has the indication ‘funèbre’ (funeral) and the finale has 77 bars. In a somewhat later copy used by Jane Stirling during her piano lessons with the composer, the March lacks the indication and the finale is two bars shorter!
Therefore, were we to stick to the definition given above, we would have to limit ourselves to the earliest impressions of first editions, accepting the fact that they may contain uncorrected mistakes and earlier versions of certain details later changed by Chopin with the use of the described practice.
That, however, is not the end of trouble. For legal and commercial reasons, editors of the same work in different countries – and Chopin published a vast share of his output in France, England and the German Confederation states – tried to synchronize their editions. As a result, it is sometimes impossible to decide which edition was the earliest one.
At this point, we need to remark that dating of the nineteenth-century music publications is not an easy task in itself and requires painstaking research. Those publications were not dated and no effort was made to mark subsequent impressions in any way. Also, it was a widespread practice for covers and title pages to be printed separately from the musical text. On the one hand, this means that copies with identical musical text can have different title pages, on the other hand, identical covers may contain different musical texts. It is only fairly recently that researchers have begun to realize the scale of the problem. Until around the end of the 20th century, Chopin scholars and editors were often unaware of actual relations between the analysed publications.
Let us mention yet another shortcoming of narrowing the term ‘first edition’ to the earliest impression of the edition of a given work. The set of thus-defined ‘first editions’ would be unstable; the impression today recognized as ‘first’ may lose its status tomorrow due to continuing research or discovery of a lost copy of an earlier impression. Such occurrences are still possible, despite tremendous progress that has been made in publications dating in recent years.
An attempt at defining the term
Summing up, if we want Chopin’s ‘first editions’ to be of interest not only to collectors of old prints but also to chopinologists, we need to define the term more broadly. We consider the relations between Chopin and a firm that carried out the publishing work to be the basic criterion here, which leads us to the following definition:
First editions – editions published at Chopin’s request, together with their later impressions and re-editions.
The above definition is ample enough to include, when properly interpreted[1], all the publications vital for finding and establishing the authentic text of the works that Chopin published. That definition was used by the editors of the National Edition of the Works of Fryderyk Chopin[2] in their selection of editions treated as sources for editorial work and commentaries.
Observant readers may have noticed that the definition omits works published posthumously. This is done on purpose, as the status of posthumous editions is fundamentally different: none[3] of them had the base text prepared by the composer with the publication in mind and the chronology of the publications is not decisive for establishing the authenticity of the text (a 20th century publication made on the basis of a newly found autograph fair copy is definitely closer to the composer’s intentions than a 19th century one based on working copies of an earlier version of the published work).
The year 2010 witnessed the publication of a truly monumental work by Christophe Grabowski and John Rink entitled Annotated Catalogue of Chopin’s First Editions (Cambridge 2010), which gathered and ordered data on first editions of Chopin’s works. Although the publication formulates different criteria for defining a ‘first edition’, yet the result for works published during Chopin’s lifetime is almost identical to that produced by our approach described above.
The list of First Editors
POLISH EDITOR
A. Brzezina, Warsaw — Op. 1 (1825), Op. 5 (1828).
FRENCH EDITORS
1. Maurice Schlesinger, Paris (son of A. M. Schlesinger, Berlin) — Op. 1 (1836), Op. 2 (1833), Op. 3 (1837), Op. 6-15, Dbop. 16, Op. 16-17 after the purchase of publishing rights from I. Pleyel (1834), Op. 18, 20-27, 29-34, Dbop. 36, Op. 44-56.
2. Simone Richault, Paris — Op. 3 (1835).
3. Schonenberger, Paris — Op. 5, as well as Op. 1-3 (1840).
4. Ignace Pleyel et Cie, Paris — Op. 16-17.
5. Prilipp et Cie, Paris — Op. 19.
6. Adolphe Catelin et Cie, Paris — Op. 28.
7. Eugène Troupenas, Paris — Dbop. 29, Op. 35-41, Op. 43.
8. Pacini, Paris — Op. 42.
9. Chabal, Paris— Dbop. 42A.
10. Bureaux de la France Musicale (Escudier frères) — Dbop. 42B.
11. Joseph Meissonnier, Paris — Op. 57-58.
12. Brandus et Cie (M. Schlesinger’s successor), Paris — Op. 59-65 and, after the purchase of publishing rights from Ad. Catelina — Op. 28 (1846), and from the Escudier brothers — Dbop. 42B (1848).
13. Henry Lemoine, Paris — who purchased publishing rights to Op. 10, 18 and 25 from M. Schlesinger (1842).
GERMAN EDITORS [4]
1. Adolf Martin Schlesinger, Berlin (father of Maurice Schlesinger, Paris) — Op. 1 (1835), Dbop. 16, Op. 32, Dbop. 36.
2. Tobias Haslinger, Vienna — Op. 2, Dbop. 29.
3. Pietro Mechetti, Vienna — Op. 3, 44-45, 50.
4. Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig— Op. 1 (1839), Op. 5 (1836), 51.
5. Friedrich Kistner, Leipzig — Op. 6-11, 13-14.
6. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig— Op. 12, 15-18, 20-31, 33-42, 46-49, 52-58, 60-65.
7. C. F. Peters, Leipzig— Op. 19.
8. Ed. Bote & G. Bock, Berlin — Dbop. 42A
9. Les fils de B. Schott, Mainz — Dbop. 42B.
10. Schuberth & Comp., Hamburg — Op. 43.
11. Stern & Cie, Berlin — Op. 59.
ENGLISH EDITORS
1. Christian Rudolf Wessel & Co., London (in the years 1841-1843 operating as Wessel & Stapleton) — Op. 1-3, 5-11, 13-16, Dbop. 16, Op. 17-42. Dbop. 42B (as ‘Op. 59 bis’), Op. 43-64.
2. Cramer, Addison & Beale, London — Op. 12, Dbop. 29.
3. Chappell, London — Dbop. 36.
4. Cramer, Beale & Cie, London — Op. 63-64.
ITALIAN EDITOR
J. Ricordi, Milan — Dbop. 29.
[1] Documentation of Chopin’s contacts with his publishers, either direct or indirect, i.e. made through another publisher, is not always known to us and new documents are still being discovered. Therefore, to simplify the matter, we treat Paris editions published in Chopin’s lifetime as belonging to first editions.
[2] Chopin. The National Edition (37 volumes). Ed. Jan Ekier, Paweł Kamiński. Kraków-Warsaw 1995-2010.
[3]The only two exceptions are Variations in E major NE 6 (on the theme of a German song) and Sonata in C minor (Op. 4) published by Haslinger in Vienna in 1851. The publisher had at his disposal Chopin’s manuscripts, as the composer had earlier (1829) intended to have those works published by Haslinger. However, the publication had not taken place then, and later Chopin no longer consented to it.
[4] All editions of Chopin’s works published in the member states of the then German Confederation are referred to as German editions. In literature, we sometimes come across the differentiation between the editions published in Vienna and referred to as ‘Austrian’ and those made in Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg or Mainz, referred to as ‘German’. Still, that differentiation surely does not apply to Chopin’s times, as both the Austrian Empire with the capital in Vienna and the Kingdom of Saxony where Leipzig was situated, the Kingdom of Prussia with the capital in Berlin, the Free City of Hamburg, and the Grand Duchy of Hesse to which Mainz was assigned were all German states. Chopin himself, visiting Vienna in 1829, gave the following descriptions of the city’s inhabitants in his letters to the family: ‘I don’t know why, but I appear to astonish the Germans’ (8 August), ‘there was a lot of clapping and bravos […] because the Germans appreciate that sort of thing’ (12 August), ‘Today in the Antiken Kabinet some German caught sight of me’ (13 August), ‘I only don’t know whether I pleased the obdurate Germans’ (19 August). Evidently, for Chopin the Viennese were simply ‘Germans’.
Literature
Jeffrey Kallberg: „Chopin in the Market Place. Aspects of the International Music Publishing Industry of the First Half of the 19th Century”. Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 39 (1982/1983) no. 3, pp. 535-569.
Christophe Grabowski, John Rink: Annotated Catalogue of Chopin’s First Editions. Cambridge 2010, p. ix-x, xix-lxi.
Jan Ekier: Wstęp do Wydania Narodowego. 1. Zagadnienia edytorskie. Kraków 1974.
