Housed in a dusty corner, squashed into a compactus or held inconveniently off-site, complete critical editions of composers’ works (henceforth, CCCEs) are often the leading exhibits in that enigmatically titled ‘Collected Works’ section of music libraries. Their shelf companions range from lengthy celebrations of national musical heritage to curated collections of instrumental repertory; nearby reside other, less sacred collections, such as cut-priced boxed sets of reprints or limited, home-printed editions of local compositional luminaries. Depending upon the classification system, CCCEs may sit near other forms of composer collections: correspondence; essays; or, even, recordings, normally with some claim to special authorization. The most common characteristic of CCCE volumes is that they are large in size, heavy in weight,Footnote ¹ and soberly bound: all signs of their aspirations to cultural immortality. Yet so many CCCEs are, or appear to be, incomplete. Through mostly adhering to a genre system of volume numbering, rather than by order of appearance, a CCCE's volume 1 might appear some decades after a series’ first publications, which might be volumes 37 or 24. Even from a distance, many (in some libraries, most) CCCEs appear rarely to have been consulted, let alone borrowed (if so riskily even allowed). But then a few volumes, of a composer's winning works in posterity's reflection, look rather worn. Indeed, CCCEs, in their quest for completeness, lie at the front line of the battle against repertory compaction, through storing away for future generations the evidence needed against earlier generations’ hasty judgements, or simply the fickle whims of popular taste. Some of those slumbering volumes may one day become the stars of a revival, while we genuinely wonder what we heard in yesterday's winners. What can be overlooked in my ‘dusty corner’ portrayal of CCCEs are the riches of the digital world. Supplements and many essential parts of a CCCE are now only available, or are more conveniently accessed, online. What appears incomplete, inflexible and user-unfriendly, on the shelf, is often complete and flexible somewhere in the digital ether.

In what follows I examine current questions for CCCEs, with particular attention to the Béla Bartók Complete Critical Edition (BBCCE), which published its first volume in 2016, jointly through Henle Verlag Munich and Editio Musica Budapest. Given some personal involvement with BBCCE, for instance as a member of its Advisory Board, my purpose is not to write a review article but to open a discussion about the challenges, purposes, formats, products, business models, risks and future possibilities for CCCEs, such as Bartók's. Along the way, I sketch some key moments in the development of CCCEs, sample some corners of a huge literature, and, through interviews, call on the witness of half a dozen editors or publishers, all busily engaged today with producing CCCEs.

Composer complete critical editions

Editions involving the systematic application of methods of source-critical philology are often dated to the inauguration of the original Bach Gesamtausgabe in 1850–51.Footnote ² The following Beethoven Gesamtausgabe, published in 1862–65, further elaborated the characteristics of the emerging template for composer editions through its claim to be ‘complete’, ‘critical’, ‘thoroughly revised’, even ‘authorized’.Footnote ³ Although not unproblematic in any of these claims, the Beethoven complete edition, and early Mozart and Schubert complete editions, among others, reinforced the belief that, through diligent study of primary sources and careful attention to their chronology, one definitive, final version of a work could normally be isolated, and henceforth privileged above all others. This ‘Fassung letzter Hand’Footnote ⁴ became the authorized, sometimes (most) ‘authentic’, version of the work. The publisher of virtually all of these early CCCEs was the venerable Breitkopf & Härtel of Leipzig, then already well into its second century of publishing music. Where these emerging CCCEs deviated from their literary critical edition companions was that they were not so exclusively an exercise in the editorial establishment of a text. They also produced something more practical: a score for performers, thereby becoming an important influence upon performing styles and conventions. Indeed, ‘Urtext’ editions emerged late in the nineteenth century specifically to present the fruits of critically authorized musical knowledge in a user-friendly format for performers.Footnote ⁵ From the mid-1950s, a new generation of CCCEs started to appear: the Neue Bach-Ausgabe; Neue Mozart-Ausgabe; Hallische Händel-Ausgabe; and the Haydn-Ausgabe. They still sought to identify best answers to questions of a final, definitive form, and corrected many earlier mistakes, but they appeared more interested in producing methodologically correct, ‘objective’ texts, than in helping players to interpret the available evidence in newly creative and individualistic ways.Footnote ⁶ As James Grier comments: ‘There is no such thing as objectivity.’ Any such ‘objective’ editor was, in Grier's eyes, either guilty of ‘sheer dereliction of duty’ through not guiding the edition's user sufficiently through ambiguous evidence, or, alternatively, of ‘misrepresentation’ through being overly definitive.Footnote ⁷

The CCCEs for the first generation of modernist composers ushered in a more nuanced editorial approach. Recorded performances, self-analytic essays and press interviews supplemented well-preserved sketch-to-score materials in evidencing compositional intentions.Footnote ⁸ The Schoenberg edition, launched in 1965, only 14 years after the composer's death, was a trailblazer in moving away from the firm focus on final form to a more open exposure of the sources.Footnote ⁹ In the first paragraph of the Schoenberg edition's Preface, Josef Rufer committed to including ‘the sketches and any earlier versions’, as well as Schoenberg's arrangements and orchestrations of the works of others.Footnote ¹⁰ The edition's user group was also expanded, being now for ‘students of composition’, as well as the customary performers and musicologists. It recognized among relevant sources recordings of works rehearsed and conducted by Schoenberg, and even included ‘any written or orally transmitted remarks’ of Schoenberg, both about individual works and composing in general. This liberal approach is still evident 52 years later in the series’ latest publication.Footnote ¹¹ In editorial method, the Schoenberg edition sought to meet the demands of its three user groups, even emulating the ‘unmistakable, characteristic’ visual aspect of Schoenberg's scores, lest the edition convey a ‘falsified appearance’. Less ground-breaking, and more bound to definitive form, was the Hindemith Edition that appeared in 1979, although it did pay careful attention to variants and early stages of works, as well as to some sound recordings. The faith it expected from the reader, however, still reflected a more authoritarian age: ‘The arrangement of the score, the critical apparatus and individual preface to each volume will make consultation of the original sources unnecessary.’Footnote ¹²

It was, however, the Debussy complete critical edition that pushed further at editorial boundaries during the 1980s, particularly through the use of documentary and recorded sound sources. Looking back recently, a founding editor of the Debussy edition, Roy Howat, identified three ways in which the project had informed knowledge of Debussy's repertory, editorial practice and performance: the presentation for the first time of hitherto unknown or unavailable works, such as the late piano piece ‘Les soirs illuminés par l'ardeur du charbon’; the throwing of new light on Debussy's intentions for well-known repertory, such as the relationship of his ‘L'isle joyeuse’ with Suite bergamasque; and imaginative use of Debussy's own piano-rolls, such as in revising the structure and interpretation of the Prélude, ‘La cathédrale engloutie’.Footnote ¹³ Howat also saw the work on the Debussy edition as having returned meaning to Debussy's own original manuscript notation, long since buried beneath engravers’ conventions. As Howat explained:

The Debussy edition, now nearly two-thirds completed, also featured active promotion, through performance or compositional activity, of several of its leading editors or board members, including Pierre Boulez, through conducting recordings of new orchestral editions, Roy Howat, who recorded all of Debussy's piano music, and Robert Orledge, who turned his editorial work on Debussy's unfinished scores to Poe's The Devil in the Belfry and The Fall of the House of Usher to creative advantage by providing his own completions, which were subsequently performed.Footnote ¹⁵ This connection of editions with ‘informed’ interpretations also features in the National Edition of Chopin's Music, which culminated in the bicentennial year of Chopin's birth, 2010. Its website promotes 11 recordings of ‘Chopin's National Edition in interpretation’, by six Polish artists,Footnote ¹⁶ presumably as pedagogic models. Chopin is also an exemplar of recent online innovation, with the Chopin Online website hosting the Online Chopin Variorum Edition.Footnote ¹⁷ This site provides rare insight into the intriguing world of work first editions and the editorial handling of disparate source materials.

The Béla Bartók Complete Critical Edition

Amid this expanding ambition for CCCEs has emerged the Béla Bartók Complete Critical Edition (BBCCE)Footnote ¹⁸ and associated Urtext publications.Footnote ¹⁹ The BBCCE was, however, planned during the 1970s, as part of a much larger range of authorized critical editions, such as Bartók's essays, letters, folk-song transcriptions and treatises, and recordings of Bartók in performance. Some of these, such as the recordingsFootnote ²⁰ and some essaysFootnote ²¹ managed to precede BBCCE's inauguration by some decades, but others, such as Bartók's letters and BBCCE became caught up in delays firstly because of the legal battles between Bartók's American and Hungarian estates, and then by the extension of copyright under the Berne Convention, from 50 to 70 years, along with a variety of other permission issues. Despite its early planning, and publication of a complete critical edition outline in 1981 during celebrations of the centenary of Bartók's birth,Footnote ²² the BBCCE had to wait until the seventieth anniversary of Bartók's death, that is, 26 September 2015, before a way forward could be confirmed.Footnote ²³ That outline of 1981 had called for 48 volumes to be published within five typical genre categories – stage, vocal, orchestral, chamber and piano – along with four volumes of piano scores and two volumes of appendices (including composition exercises, transcriptions and orchestrations by others).Footnote ²⁴ This project outline predicted some 9,000 to 10,000 pages of printed music, and 1,500 pages of facsimile scores, plus full critical commentaries.Footnote ²⁵ That same plan, with minor revisions, is now finally being implemented. The current expectation is to publish BBCCE's final volume (possibly, of The Miraculous Mandarin) in the mid-2040s, by which time any remaining copyright restrictions are expected to have expired.

During those painful 35 years of waiting, however, considerable training of two generations of skilled editors took place at the Bartók Archives in Budapest, and work was commenced on about a dozen BBCCE volumes, under Somfai's direction. Between 1981 and 2016, however, the purpose of critical editions came under review. From a series conceived under the shadow of post-war Neue Ausgabe methodologies, with a key purpose in publishing ‘a final version of the score’ (1981), the editorial philosophy had by 1990 changed, under some influence of recent Schoenberg and Debussy editions. There was recognition that ‘successive forms in the creative and editing process of a work do not automatically represent straight maturation (“evolution”) with one sole authentic form at the end of the source chain’, along with an understanding that recordings of Bartók's performances may raise ‘serious methodological problems’ through having to be considered as primary sources.Footnote ²⁶ By 2016 the goal of the series had explicitly become ‘not to reduce the musical text to one authentic form’.Footnote ²⁷ Rather, it was to be an edition, for scholarly and practical use, which offered variants and possible choices, some of which would be included in the edition's main text. I asked László Vikárius, now the BBCCE's Editor-in-Chief, how he felt about the series’ move away from an end-goal of an ‘unambiguous final version’, and he replied:

In other ways, too, the series clarified its purposes over these many, enforced decades of delay, thereby becoming a more distinctively Bartókian exercise. As early volumes were prepared in the early 1990s, the understanding of Bartók as a master notator grew, not just through deep study of his compositions,Footnote ²⁹ but also through increasing recognition of the extreme subtlety of his ethnomusicological transcriptions,Footnote ³⁰ and hence a heightened awareness of the ways Bartók notated the good half of his output that is explicitly beholden to folk-music sources. As László Somfai commented in a recent interview:

The essays on ‘Notation and Performance’ that occur near the commencement of each BBCCE volume are some of their most distinctive pages. As with that other master notator, Arnold Schoenberg,Footnote ³² there is little that is notationally unintentional in Bartók's scholarly and compositional output, but – as these introductory essays show – this does not mean that Bartók did not change his notations over time. He ever struggled for the ‘best possible’ representation of his scores: ‘best possible’ in relation to instrument, genre and recipient audience, as well as changing conventions. The distinction, then, between his scores for learners and those for professional players is stark, and was honed through his many commissions for pedagogic editions of piano classics.Footnote ³³ For learners, he demonstrated strong and consistent concern for clear phrasing, fingering, pedalling, bowing, breathing and advice on dynamics, touch, accentuation, even distinguishing keyboard players with small hands from those with larger hands (for instance, in including or excluding stretches of an octave, or more). This concern is not surprising. Bartók's primary wage-earning profession was, after all, for nearly three decades that of a professor of piano at the Liszt Academy. With the professional player more was left up to the player's own musicianship, but Bartók nearly always sought to give precise advice on tempos and section durations, that is, to communicate how fast or long a typical performance of his own might take.Footnote ³⁴ Richest of all, as notational sources, are the occasional ‘professional’ pieces which have been accorded a fully pedagogic explicitness of notation, such as Bartók's Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, Op. 20. In interview, Somfai nicely calls such works, ‘overwhelmingly elaborated’. The first BBCCE volume to appear was Vikárius's edition of the For Children pieces, a deliberate choice because it immediately showcased so many distinctive issues of notation, within folk-infused styles, and for educational purposes. This volume also established the balanced tone between scholarly, performing and pedagogic features of the entire BBCCE. While many CCCEs have sought in recent years to emphasize their relevance to performers, Vikárius wants ‘to emphasize that scholarship might [sometimes] have different interests to performance’, which also need to be catered for in this critical edition.Footnote ³⁵

The BBCCE will, then, track the many changes in Bartók's notations over his career, both directly in his own usage and as mediated (or so attempted) by his various publishers. Different signs and usages with pedalling are just one such example. Fingering also provides a particularly instructive case as it charts a course from the smoother, more scalar (‘thumbs under’) Lisztian fingering of Bartók's youth – his Academy teacher, István Thomán, was a Liszt pupil – to the more rapid shifts of hand-positions of his older age, a technique he taught to his own son, Peter.Footnote ³⁶ In Bartók's more difficult compositions his own fingerings are some kind of ‘secret source for a clever interpreter’, Somfai suggests in interview.Footnote ³⁷ By seeking to represent Bartók's many changes, and sometimes apparent inconsistencies (very interesting ‘inconsistencies’ for one so notationally self-aware, for instance, in use of enharmonic pitch spellings), rather than to normalize or subliminally stabilize them for a claimed advantage of greater uniformity or easier comprehensibility, the BBCCE celebrates that quality that Bartók himself most emphasized in his approach to music: habitual variation.Footnote ³⁸ His statement of 1937 to the Belgian scholar Denijs Dille (from 1961, the first Director of the Bartók Archives in Budapest), covered Bartók's mature view of composition and performance, as well as ethnomusicology: ‘I do not like to repeat a musical thought unchanged, and I never repeat a detail unchanged […] The extreme variety that characterizes our folk music is, at the same time, a manifestation of my own nature.’Footnote ³⁹ Such a variational view challenges the very concept of an ‘unambiguous final form’; it also helps to explain Bartók's own frequent deviations from his own scores in his own performances. The pounding chords of Bartók's signature Allegro barbaro present the ultimate case study. In all scores of this work to this day, even Henle's recent Urtext, the mid-piece iteration of these pounding chords (bars 88–100) has, famously, 13 bars.Footnote ⁴⁰ The trouble is that Bartók's ‘authentic gramophone recordings’ (Bartók's words, which, at his request, were even placed in his late scores of the work) from 1929 and 1935 only include 12 bars at this point. What to do? Somfai has identified a misreading in the original copying of the autograph draft that led to the erroneous 13 bars that are found in all printed editions, despite Bartók's own proof-reading and multiple opportunities for correction. But Bartók clearly did not follow this textual error in performance. Hence, the impeccable traditional logic of source chains supports 13 bars being found, even in Somfai's recent Henle Urtext, and probably to be reproduced in his forthcoming BBCCE volume. Nonetheless, in the Henle Urtext's commentary to these bars, Somfai nonchalantly notes, ‘there is solid evidence for the performer today to follow his [Bartók's] practice’, meaning to play just 12 bars of these pounding chords. By treating Bartók's own ‘authentic’ recordings equally with his sketch-to-score trail, Somfai invites pianists to draw on variant sources of different types in customizing their own performance. He points out, in the commentary to the Romanian Folk Dances Urtext, issued by Henle, how Bartók's piano-roll recording from December 1927Footnote ⁴¹ shows an embellished version of the score of Dance No. 1 (with added grace notes, slides, heel-clicking figures and so on) that had ‘presumably evolved in the course of his concert performances; this process corresponds, in certain respects, with the way in which different performances of folk music typically also inspire variants’.Footnote ⁴² Even more tantalizing is the question of what to do when Bartók many years later decided that the folk-music transcription used as the basis for his Romanian Folk Dances No. 4, which had originally been in triple time, was now better transcribed in 10/16 and 9/16 time. Meanwhile, however, his arrangements of Romanian Folk Dances had become among his best sellers with Universal Edition.Footnote ⁴³ But how would we feel about an Associated Board Grade 7 student presenting this work in the new metres, on the basis of a source correction noted in the very score being used?

Regarding stemmatics, the BBCCE volumes, whether in print or in preparation, appear very tight, ever concerned to demonstrate why one or other source is the preferred primary source, and how other sources have contributed, or not, to the current edition; or why, such as with his Improvisations, there is no indisputable primary source, and so to justify the complex of source evidence for the current edition.Footnote ⁴⁴ This open-minded, yet rigorous approach leads to many fascinating debates and conclusions, which only reinforce the representation of Bartók as a master of variations through his many variants or entire versions of competing validities. An interesting case arises in the critical edition being prepared for BBCCE's opening volumes: Duke Bluebeard's Castle (BBCCE volume 1 [edition], volume 2 [critical commentary]). The work's editor, Márton Kerékfy, describes his current thinking:

The published For Children volume presents two, complete and equal versions of the work: that published between 1909 and 1912, by Budapest publisher Károly Rozsnyai; and that published posthumously in 1946, by Boosey & Hawkes of London/New York. That is, the revised version did not replace the ‘early’ version; they are ‘distinct’ versions, and for that reason the volume presents them throughout as comparative, parallel texts.Footnote ⁴⁶ The volume also presents other uses of some pieces, such as in Bartók's Young People at the Piano (1938), and two sets of violin-piano arrangements of Hungarian pieces by József Szigeti (1926) and Tivadar Országh (1934), as well as producing transcriptions of early draft materials. But Vikárius does not stop there, because, with For Children, there is a double question of sources. Bartók's many small pieces are almost exclusively arrangements of Hungarian or Slovak folksongs, so his extensive Appendix begins with the sources of these songs, presenting transcriptions of music and text, with Bartók's own notes, and English, German and Hungarian translations, as applicable. As the words to some of Bartók's chosen songs had some surprisingly advanced notions for children, and so were suppressed in previous publications, they are premiered in this Appendix, although in a way that is more enlightening to English-language or Slovak readers of the footnotes than their German or Hungarian cousins.

The second volume of BBCCE, Klára Móricz's edition of Concerto for Orchestra, presents other issues that thwart a clear, unambiguous answer to the question of the piece's ‘final version’. Firstly, Bartók died before completing his comments on the second set of proofs for the score, which was then posthumously published by Boosey & Hawkes in 1946. As with all Bartók works of the American years (1940–45), his ultimate intentions remain, to varying degrees, unclear, and their posthumously published scores contestable. More significantly, however, at death Bartók had not clarified what to do with a longer, more rousing ending to Concerto for Orchestra that he had composed following some criticisms of the abruptness of the original ending, when it was played at the first run of performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in December 1944 and January 1945. Although claimed as an ‘alternative ending’ – that is, an equally authorized variant – in the published score, did he really intend it, as most conductors have since assumed, as a ‘replacement’ of his original ending? In interview, Móricz revealed that this was an important issue for her, and a matter both of conscience and purpose:

In the end, Móricz maintained the alternative ending interpretation for her BBCCE volume, but signposted the issues for readers of the volume's Critical Commentary. I also challenged Móricz over the inclusion of all of the sketch and draft materials to the work in that Commentary, where they are presented in an impeccable, annotated transcription (not in facsimile). Móricz replied again looking to the future: ‘Why do we care about these sketches? We care as it is the only way we can really say something about [Bartók's] compositional habits.’ The issue of how much these crucial documents of genesis should be found in a critical edition, and whether a presentation is preferred in facsimile, transcription, or both, is a common question for twenty-first century editions, especially with the availability of high-quality digital and multi-layer score presentations.Footnote ⁴⁸ With some composers, and Bartók has sometimes been one of them, the complexities of permissions have deterred such a comprehensive approach, and sometimes pushed editors – as with Móricz, in this Concerto for Orchestra volume – towards including transcriptions, without the parallel facsimile. Fortunately, the owners or repository holders of several vital Bartók autograph draft or score sources have consented to the production of generally lavish facsimile editions, for instance, of the Piano Sonata (ed. Somfai, 1981), Viola Concerto (ed. Dellamaggiore, 1995), Dance Suite (ed. Bónis, 1998), Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (ed. Meyer, 2000), and Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (ed. Meyer, 2018). These facsimile editions have often included accompanying essays about genesis, first performance, reception, analysis and sometimes transcriptions of the facsimiles themselves, hence often covering territory similar to critical editions.Footnote ⁴⁹

These early volumes in BBCCE, and associated early Henle Urtext releases, through their introductory essays and concluding critical commentaries, demonstrate the necessity of going beyond musical or sound sources in providing a comprehensive account of a composer's musical and publication legacy. Although varying in importance from one composer to another, verbal and visual sources can also be relevant.Footnote ⁵⁰ In Bartók's case his essays (especially self-analysesFootnote ⁵¹) and correspondence (especially with other music professionals) are often vital in lighting the way from sketch to score, on to première, and, further, into an understanding of how definitive or variant states of the work were negotiated and finally fixed in publication. This is one of the many reasons why the correspondence of many great musicians may need the planning and editorial control of its own complete critical edition, as has occurred recently, for instance, with the complete correspondence of Mendelssohn,Footnote ⁵² and was originally intended to proceed as part of the broader Bartók critical edition project.Footnote ⁵³ This aim is still preserved in the Bartók correspondence database, a by-product of BBCCE research funding, now found on the Budapest Bartók Archives’ website.Footnote ⁵⁴ This database lists some 4,000 extant letters, postcards and correspondence drafts by Bartók and 5,000 other items, mainly letters to Bartók. Copies or originals of many of these are held in the Bartók Archives. Particularly valuable to BBCCE volumes are Bartók's professional letters to his publishers, especially Universal Edition and Boosey & Hawkes. These publisher letters often provide a needed context to the profusion of autographs, copies, proofs and scores found in Bartók's legacy; often, too, they are the missing link in explaining why an otherwise inexplicable change has occurred somewhere in the source chain.Footnote ⁵⁵

At this point, the role of a Bartók thematic catalogue needs to enter the discussion. In a paper delivered to a Bartók Colloquium held in Szombathely, Hungary, during July 2011, G. Henle Verlag's General Manager, Wolf-Dieter Seiffert, delivered ‘Four Observations, to Read in Ten Minutes, About Modern Thematic Catalogues in Music’.Footnote ⁵⁶ He spoke about a current boom in composer thematic cataloguesFootnote ⁵⁷ and their mutual dependency with CCCE projects, often appearing either at the start of such an edition project, and so providing a guide to it, or coming very near the end, and so summarizing what had become known, or problems that had been solved, during the edition's course. Seiffert also observed that each generation looked upon a composer's efforts anew, and so a new, or revised, composer thematic catalogue was needed once every few decades. He looked forward to the appearance of a Bartók Thematic Catalogue, which Henle had contracted with László Somfai, who subsequently gave a progress report on that catalogue to the Colloquium.Footnote ⁵⁸ Somfai's draft volume, the antecedents of which go back to a thematic index of the early 1990s, is undoubtedly in Seiffert's first category, of thematic catalogue as roadmap to a CCCE. As with other recent thematic catalogues published by Henle (such as Schumann [2003], Reger [2010], and Beethoven [2014]), this Bartók catalogue ranges far beyond its title – the themes of works (represented as incipits) – to present key information about title and duration, origin of themes, chronology of composition, primary sources, printed editions, and some details about early performances. Somfai's Szombathely paper of 2011 directly outlined his intention that the catalogue guide the editors of the BBCCE, although recognized that as BBCCE volumes appeared the catalogue may progressively become obsolete. He also highlighted some especially Bartókian features of his thematic catalogue: that it will raise sometimes awkward questions, for instance about missing links in source chains, with the hope of later identification of those links;Footnote ⁵⁹ that the disruption of Bartók's switch in publishers in 1938–39, and hence use of outdated European editions as the basis for some early American editions of Boosey & Hawkes, will require careful handling because of consequent complexities of two ‘authentic’ source branches. As BBCCE volumes have started to appear, but not yet Somfai's thematic catalogue, I asked him about its finalization:

In his Szombathely paper, however, Somfai presents another, and surprising, role for his Bartók catalogue: that it will be a temporary substitute for a composer ‘life and works’ study, as Bartók scholarship simply lacks the kind of big, integrative volumes that Richard Taruskin had presented to Stravinsky scholarship in 1996.Footnote ⁶¹ Somfai in 2000,Footnote ⁶² and reiterated in 2011, saw this thematic catalogue as filling such a gap, becoming a ‘chief source of critically selected information about his oeuvre, and about the individual compositions’.Footnote ⁶³

Formats and products

A sub-theme raised in both Seiffert's and Somfai's papers of 2011 is technology, and, with it, essential questions about information formats and their marketability: what can, or should, be presented online, in print, or available in both formats? It was the right time to raise such questions as both thematic catalogues and CCCE volumes were coming under challenge because of increasing volume sizeFootnote ⁶⁴ and cost, as well as the desirability of frequent updating of thematic catalogues, in particular. In the fourth ‘observation’ of his Szombathely paper, Seiffert rehearsed the reasons for online versions, but spoke against having thematic catalogues only available online. He believed that the consumer should be given a choice, and that for many uses a printed version was still to be preferred.Footnote ⁶⁵ Somfai deferred to the publisher, but could see the immediate benefit at least of keeping lists up-to-date via an online site. It was, then, with some surprise that Henle's hard-copy Ludwig van Beethoven: Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis, published in two volumes in 2014 (2,000 pages), after discussing the growing number of Beethoven-related digitization projects, online repositories, and other aspects of digital access to Beethoven materials in major libraries, announced that ‘the present edition of the Beethoven Catalogue of Works will probably be the last one to appear in print form. The future of such a compilation and processing of information lies in the digital realm.’Footnote ⁶⁶ So, I asked Wolf-Dieter Seiffert whether his views had changed since 2011, and how Henle was now investing in new technology, and he replied:

While the BBCCE volumes have, so far, only appeared in highly priced, cloth-bound covers and low print runs, the dozen spin-off Urtext editions – all, so far, of Bartók's piano works and extracted from BBCCE volumes that have appeared, or are shortly to appear – are all available in dual formats: Henle's traditional blue-covered sheet-music format, but also in a digital tablet format (for iPads and Android), via the Henle Library.Footnote ⁶⁹ The Henle Library App promises that it will soon (Seiffert suggests within 12 months) have converted its entire sheet-music catalogue into this digital form, which already allows player annotation, importing of different fingerings (including Bartók's fingerings – but not phrasings or pedallings – from his 1912 Rozsnyai editions of Mozart piano sonatas), integrated in-score critical notes, and many layout options.Footnote ⁷⁰ Henle's partner in the Bartók projects, Editio Musica Budapest, undertakes all Hungarian textual aspects and shares engraving responsibilities by genre; it produces the orchestral full scores and vocal music, for instance, while Henle is responsible for piano and chamber-music works. Asked about the technological possibilities for BBCCE, Márton Kerékfy, Chief Editor at Editio Musica, replied:

László Vikárius, in interview, lists some other technological virtues of digital editions, including the potential to present complex layering of sources more imaginatively,Footnote ⁷² as well as to achieve greater clarity in facsimile or transcription details, both of which current print volumes present in black-and-white, or occasionally grey (indicating original use of pencil).

The opportunities for choice and customization of formats are clearly much greater in digital than print formats. When applied to a critical edition there is not just a digital choice between variants or versions,Footnote ⁷³ but also between languages. Not everyone – in fact, probably virtually no-one – wants their critical edition with all introductory essays in three languages (English, Hungarian, German, in the current BBCCE volumes), while most would recognize the need for different groups to have access to these materials in a judicious choice of languages. A digital format also facilitates easier use of automated translation services, such as Google Translate, but CCCEs often have too specialized a use of language to achieve translation reliability, although automated translation is incrementally improving and becoming more topic specific. As well, while German↔English and Dutch↔English are now quite sophisticated business tools of automated translation, the Finno-Ugric nature of Hungarian, with its distinctive word order, still produces automated translations that can verge on comedy. Of course, this does not mean that future generations will be so limited. As an example of present-day automated translation capacities and limitations, I carried out the following tests of one reasonably technical sentence, appearing in the three different languages used in BBCCE volume 24, Concerto for Orchestra. I was pleasantly surprised. Comic, maybe, but deserving some good marks for effort, and imagination!

With a digital format, different readers will certainly want different fonts, or point sizes, in the main text, in music notations, and to enlarge the smaller-sized detail of the critical commentary. This is, of course, unavailable in the take-it-or-leave-it predetermined fonts or sizes of any print version. A digital edition also allows for in-text introduction of sound examples, as unavailable in the print form, or direct connection to websites providing those examples. Moreover, a digital text allows for the parts of the editions written in words to be read to you, using text-to-speech software, some even allowing your choice of human reader.Footnote ⁷⁴ As musicians often claim to think through their ears, this is not just for use by the sight-impaired. Of course, the technology of print-on-demand (POD) is now well matured,Footnote ⁷⁵ and favoured by publishers because it minimizes the need for storage of printed matter. Readers have options of having their own customized print copies run off, just as you might do with your own printer, but with a professional quality of finish, paper stock, illustrations, colours and bindings.Footnote ⁷⁶

From the editor's or scholar's viewpoint, digital editions are more easily accessed, corrected and updated, but for scholarly work such as critical editions strict control of authority to make and document these changes is essential. The advantage of the print version is that it cannot easily be changed, and so the validity, albeit out-dated, is less easily questioned than a frequently updated digital form of questionable provenance. By 2018 the answer to the ‘digital or print?’ question would appear to be ‘no longer the relevant question’. Rather, nearly all these materials are now substantially digitally born, and the question for customers who do not want that format is whether they themselves, the publisher or a third-party printery, should undertake the printing process. For many libraries, indeed, a print-plus-digital subscription may still remain the most viable package of formats, with one for on-shelf reference and the other for maximal user access. This is, in fact, the solution adopted by so many scientific journals over recent decades. And that raises another question that scientific journals have grappled with: pre-prints. How much does a critical edition's score need to be ‘road tested’ before it goes to print? The number of errata slips that innocently fluttered out of critical edition volumes during my library research underscored the importance of this question. In interview, I asked the Concerto for Orchestra's editor, Klára Móricz, about the appearance of her critical edition before any practical editions derived from it, and she replied: ‘I still have some nightmares about that.’Footnote ⁷⁷ This situation seems analogous to the pre-print phenomenon in science publishing, and increasingly in the humanities, whereby a digital copy of an article is released for peer review and comment before being accepted in an authorized, and (at least, potentially) print form. There will always be need for correction, and sometimes deeper rethinking, in significant research works, and the pre-print provides a (sometimes uncomfortable) opportunity for testing, vetting and correction, as well as exclusion on grounds of inadequate quality, clarity, methodology or unsubstantiated findings. Such important works for posterity as CCCEs or thematic catalogues might also benefit from such preliminary publication phases.Footnote ⁷⁸

What does seem sure is that before BBCCE concludes, in the mid-2040s, it will have a different choice of formats from today. Given issues of digital security alone, one option may well still be a printed format, but some other options may not yet even have been imagined.

Business models

The business model of a CCCE needs to be sustainable over decades, even generations. Across those years, the edition has to maintain a coherent critical stance, and a consistency in notations and style of commentary across a variety of genres. It is not surprising that many CCCEs, during their course, experience fundamental changes in funders and sponsors, editors and editorial boards, publishers and promoters, and in consumer reception of the edition and its associated outputs. By its conclusion all its founders may have died, and some CCCEs themselves do just expire, although many more linger on tenuously, sometimes hibernating for years. These pressures appear to be greater outside central Europe, because critical editions generally command a less secure position in research, artistic or cultural priorities, or because professional and audience commitments have changed more radically in recent decades. The 43-volume Elgar Complete Edition, for instance, has struggled valiantly since its launch in 1981, and so far managed to produce 31 of those volumes.Footnote ⁷⁹ Over that time it has moved from a commercial London publisher, Novello, through issuing editions under its own name and charitable vehicle – with only a couple of editions produced over a 15-year period – to publication since 2007 under the ‘Elgar Works Limited’ label, another charitable company whose primary aim is publishing Elgar-related scores, parts and books.Footnote ⁸⁰ With the support of the Elgar Society and Bristol University,Footnote ⁸¹ the Elgar Complete Edition is currently slated for conclusion in 2023.Footnote ⁸² Such arrangements of connected or successor charities are not uncommon in common-law countries for large artistic projects that find themselves lacking an enduring basis of funding or publication. The New Liszt Edition, now after half a century nearing the end of its publication of all of Liszt's piano solo and associated supplementary volumes, has, since is inception in 1970, experienced both a significant reformulation of purpose,Footnote ⁸³ and also a major change in publication auspices.Footnote ⁸⁴ The 36-volume Debussy edition, too, after just five initial volumes to 1991, was suspended for six years until a new publishing and editorial arrangement could be forged, and the edition re-booted.Footnote ⁸⁵ Subsequently, it started also to receive long-term support from Musica Gallica, a collaboration between the French Ministry of Culture and the private Fondation Francis et Mica Salabert. Meanwhile, the Schoenberg edition, half a century after its first volumes appeared, has produced 74 of 76 planned volumes, although the need for revised volume editions may leave it still in operation for some years to come.Footnote ⁸⁶ One of the criteria that clearly distinguishes these other editions from the Schoenberg edition has been the latter's reasonably steady commitment of public funding. Early agreement of family or heirs to support the launch of a new CCCE also helps. What is clear is that the production of CCCEs can gain support, in cash or in kind, from a wide variety of sources. The availability of such funds, however, varies hugely between country, status of composer or type of edition, private-corporate-public balance of philanthropy, a society's natural musical vibrancy, and the stability of publishing arrangements.

The following paragraphs outline many different funding sources in recent decades for CCCEs and some other collected edition projects, with a particular eye to the current opportunities for BBCCE. Indeed, with the benefit of some decades of pre-planning, the BBCCE has managed to gain significant support from four categories of (mainly) public funding. This is partly because of Bartók's stature, as Hungary's leading composer, but perhaps also because of a wider beacon-of-humanity, moral role.Footnote ⁸⁷ As Somfai comments: ‘Bartók is still an untouchable icon in Hungary.’Footnote ⁸⁸

Major forms of public support can be: musical, artistic or cultural public agencies, such as BBCCE's multi-year grant from the National Cultural Fund of Hungary; scientific, or learned, academies, such as the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, of which the Bartók Archives is an integral part; research agencies, such the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) recently becoming part of the NKFIH (National Research, Development and Innovation Office) that funds individual or team-based research; public universities, such as the Ferenc Liszt University (previously, Academy of Music), where most BBCCE's editors gained their initial experience with editorial methods. This pattern of support from the public purse is very similar to the German pattern, for instance, whereby funding from the eight-member German Union of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (Union der Akademien der Wissenschaften),Footnote ⁸⁹ or its individual members, has supported so many German CCCEs, such as Schoenberg's.

There are, however, many other forms of support offered to CCCEs, including from: professional associations, such as the Royal Musical Association's sponsorship of the 100-volume Musica Britannica series; corporate philanthropy, such as VolkswagenWerk Foundation's support of the Schoenberg Edition between 1965 and 1980; composer-trustees or heirs, such as the founding support of Bartók's younger son, Peter Bartók, for the Béla Bartók: Hungarian Folk Songs Complete Collection (incomplete), amongst other projects; private foundations, such as of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon) for the New Berlioz Edition, or of the Paul Sacher Foundation (Basel) that supports all manner of scholarship into recent composition, including manuscript acquisition and associated publications, although not directly CCCEs. Another pan-national funding source for some CCCEs has been the European Commission's ‘Horizon 2020’ scheme,Footnote ⁹⁰ and potentially the ‘Horizon Europe’ research and innovation framework to 2027.

As well as the specific support to CCCE projects, the importance of secure institutions to sustain such long-term projects appears paramount. I asked László Vikárius about how he could ensure a continuing flow of volume editors for BBCCE, and he responded without hesitation:

He went on to address that very special passion that music can arouse, sometimes leading to extraordinary levels of self-sacrifice. ‘I do hope I can maintain this tradition, and train and involve younger scholars.’ Also vital to the project's success are visionary publishers, with their own viable business models. The Bartók co-publishing arrangement, with its various BBCCE, Urtext and thematic catalogue obligations, has already seen some recasting. In September 2017 Editio Musica Budapest (EMB), since 2006 a member of the world's largest music publisher, the Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), has split into two entities: Universal EMB (still part of UMPG) and an independent EMB Zenemu˝kiadó, which now takes over the BBCCE relationships with Henle,Footnote ⁹² along with specialist staff. In an email exchange with Wolf-Dieter Seiffert I asked about Henle's business model for the BBCCE, and he summarized its essential features, like this:

Seiffert also touched upon the main consumers of CCCEs, which are still libraries, although he notes that specialist retailers or wholesalers, such as Broude Brothers in the United States, or Harrassowitz in Germany,Footnote ⁹⁴ are an important part of their sales landscape. And he continued:

In interpreting the current BBCCE business model and likely changes in format and products, then, in terms of risks and possible mitigations of risk, it would seem that:

1. Income sources are well spread, but mainly reliant upon national public funds and institutions. Given the three-decade planning horizon of BBCCE, a better mix of public and private funding sources, and in-kind support, as well as more international funding support, would help to mitigate the risk of governmental instability, economic downturns or even major currency fluctuations.

2. Current funding bodies in Hungary well accept such high-end critical editing as important ‘research’. A risk is that applicable definitions of ‘research’ excellence or impact change towards being less accepting of such work. The difficulties in recognition of journal editing and translation work within research definitions in many parts of the world, for instance, illustrate how important such inclusions or exclusions can be. Broader challenges are also possible through changing institutional or national priorities, prejudice against so-called ‘useless humanities research’, and revision of acceptable metrics of research quality, impact or engagement. A suitable mitigation would be to balance explicit research funding with other kinds of public or private revenue (cultural, maintenance, educational training and untied giving).

3. Publisher discontinuities feature heavily in the historical woes of many CCCEs, so edition planning needs to have maximal integration with publisher plans for the composer edition, its spin-offs, format innovations and cognate products. As Wolf-Dieter Seiffert states: ‘“Falling behind” was never a strategy of Henle Verlag.’Footnote ⁹⁶

4. The BBCCE, once planned, experienced a ‘single point of failure’ for some decades, which was legal. As those legal prohibitions fall away over the coming decades, the edition needs to ensure, through skilful marketing, that its ‘most informed’ role in a busy marketplace leads to less adequate editions being replaced, on concert platforms, in private studios, in school rooms, and on scholars’ shelves. If BBCCE just slumbers gracefully on those dusty ‘Collected Edition’ shelves, or quickly becomes unobtainable, then that will prove to be the ultimate ‘point of failure’ of the entire enterprise.

Conclusions

Composer complete critical editions are here to stay, and the world does still need them. Occasionally, in times of financial feast, they will flourish. More frequently, their circumstance is constrained, yet they grind on through an incredible dedication of musicians, scholars, publishers and benevolent music lovers. CCCEs will remain part of a larger corpus of essays, correspondence and recordings that are core elements of a composer's heritage. Although most strongly based in the central countries of Europe, critical editions will continue to be propagated across the world,Footnote ⁹⁷ reflecting an abiding faith in some dispassionate, critical stance upon a composer's ‘true’ intentions for a musical work. Rather than seeking the consistent ‘resolution’ of variants forged by the faultless editor of a sacred text, however, the critical edition now assumes a more humble, more provisional – as László Vikárius has said, ‘more human’ – posture towards musical works, recognizing that future generations may well find different bases, even different evidence, for reviewing the work and refreshing understanding of it. The study of formats and products suggests that CCCEs are becoming just another part of a ‘blended’ world of education, scholarship and entertainment, that demands rethought business models, publishing arrangements and the management of risks, old and new.

The case study of the Béla Bartók Complete Critical Edition shows how difficult it was to turn plans forged in the 1970s into the publication realities of the 2010s. Yet those decades of delay were gainfully used to rethink core questions, train editors, compile draft volumes and secure funding lines. Despite the frustrations of delay, in 2016 the BBCCE emerged strengthened: by its policy determination that the goal of series volumes was explicitly ‘not to reduce the musical text to one authentic form’, although still paying careful attention to questions of the primary forms of works; by its highly detailed programme of critical work, guided by 30 years of research for the Bartók thematic catalogue; by its enhanced concentration upon the geneses of works; and by a strong co-publisher partnership between Germany and Hungary. As with the Schoenberg critical edition, half a century ago, the Bartók now has an opportunity to become a pillar of twenty-first century approaches to musical scholarship and informed performance.