Verdi’s Requiem raises few editorial questions. And yet in many details Marco Uvietta’s edition gives a different emphasis than earlier editions. A newly-discovered source contributed to this.

The autograph score of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem (1874–1875) is a very carefully-prepared manuscript. The history of the musical text is therefore quite consistent, and editorial interventions in a modern edition are mainly confined to questions of detail.

The secondary sources seldom offer solutions to existing problems in the autograph score. From time to time variant readings in these sources are revealing for contemporary notation and performance practice, but just as often they simply substantiate misunderstandings which have been perpetuated in 20th century editions which remain in use to the present day. Therefore, in the music text of the new Bärenreiter edition some seldom-found variant readings have been included from sources in hands other than the composer’s own; by comparison, sources based on the autograph manuscript are frequently cited in the Critical Commentary in order to document the origin of mistakes found in the Ricordi editions of 1913 and 1964.  In the process it has become evident that a number of variant readings in these scores (used as the basis for many historic recordings still available) are the fruit of misunderstandings, rather than the result of considered decisions. Notes in the critical apparatus which relate to these editions which are still in use have been emphasized so that the reader can easily recognise where the new edition varies from these.

Despite the precision of the autograph manuscript, uncertainties naturally exist in a number of areas: the length and style of slurs, the distinction between accent wedges and diminuendo hairpin marks, horizontal and vertical divergences regarding dynamics, articulation and phrasing which can be traced back to the different phases of creating the full score, etc. As there is no definitive solution to problems of this nature and it was not possible to indicate every doubtful instance, as far as possible the notation has been brought into line with current practice and problematic passages discussed in the Critical Commentary. Typographical differentiations have been kept to a necessary minimum so that the score remains legible and offers the conductor useful information for performances. For this reason, the printed edition includes just the comments from the critical apparatus intended for performers, whereas the complete apparatus is available on the publisher’s website.

In this edition we were able to evaluate a newly-discovered source (rRIms). This is a manuscript vocal score which was probably made for practical purposes and not specifically as a printer’s copy. Nevertheless the vocal scores published by Ricordi in 1874/1875 evidently used this manuscript and they very largely correspond with it. rRIms contains the “Liber scriptus” in the second version of 1875 (though the relevant folios were possibly only exchanged later), in a variant reading which was probably based on a through-composed sketch predating the definitive full score. Here there are differences from the autograph which cannot be explained either as mistakes or omissions in copying the work, nor as an attempt to reconcile discrepancies; nor can they be traced back to other well-known secondary sources. This source therefore assumes importance, as the manuscript was undoubtedly prepared by someone working very closely with Verdi. Franco Faccio (who took over conducting the Messa after the two performances conducted by Verdi himself) probably played an important role in the preparation of this manuscript.  The high level of agreement between  rRIms and the first of the vocal scores lends this greater authority, also in the variant readings which evidently vary from the autograph.         

Marco Uvietta