Abstract
Any ere ative work of art takes on a life of its own af ter its ere ator has re leased it to the world. While this is cer tainly true of text ma teri als, it is dou bly true of mu sic scores. Mu sic is writ ten for per for mance, and so the per form ing art ist plays a cru cial me di at ing role in bring ing a mu sicscore to fru ition. While the the o ret i cal “pure” score is im por tant for schol arly pur poses and as an in di cation of the com poser'sintentions, the various edi tions of a work also con tainimportant informationabout how the score has been in ter preted by ed i tors. In the ab sence of anurtext edi tion, the var i ous per form ing edi tions com pete for the “stan dard” edition. Often ed i tors have al tered and cut works, usu ally with out anyin dr cationofwhathas been altered or deleted. Thisarticle ex amines various edi tions of three works: Smetana's AusderHeimat (a relatively obscure work by a well-known com poser), Rode's Sixth Con certo (an ob scure work-thoughstill in print-by an ob scure com poser), and Tchaikovsky's Vi o lin Concerto (one of the best known works in the vi o lin repertoire). Musi cal ex am pies document the alt erationsand de le tions indifferent edi tions of the same work. The pa per con eludes that var i ous editions are necessary bothtoilluminatethecomposer'sintentions and as a history of those in ten tions as con ceived and ex e cuted by e d itors and performers.