After his editions of works by Beethoven and Elgar, the English musicologist Jonathan Del Mar has now returned to the works of Antonín Dvořák for a second time, following his edition of the Cello Concerto. The 7th Symphony has just been published.
“Now I am preoccupied with a new symphony; wherever I go and stand, I have nothing else on my mind than this work, which is intended, with God’s help, to shake the world.” So wrote Antonín Dvořák about his 7th Symphony.
This new edition by Jonathan Del Mar published by Bärenreiter is the first major symphony of Dvořák to be issued in a critical new edition. Del Mar has previously won international recognition for his editions of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto (BA 9045) as well as his editions of works by Beethoven and Elgar. It is the first Urtext edition ever of this major work. The new edition sets the highest scholarly standards, without losing sight of the practical requirements of today’s musicians.
Antonín Dvořák’s compositional activities in the 1880s were to a large extent influenced by an increasing and very fruitful relationship with England and its musical institutions. His nine professional visits to England all featured high-quality performances, and in five cases important premieres. And so it was also with the 7th Symphony, which was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society in August 1883 and premiered on 22 April 1885 conducted by the composer. Despite the evident success of the symphony with the audience at its premiere, after a meeting with Hanslick and Simrock on 4 June 1885 in Karlsbad at which the work was discussed, Dvořák undertook a major revision, particularly of the slow movement. The second movement – originally with the tempo indication “Andante sostenuto” – was considerably longer in the version performed at the premiere than the one which subsequently came to be performed. Dvořák cut 40 bars in the development and reprise, and the symphony was published in this shorter form and it has been performed exclusively in this version until today. As the pages removed from the autograph manuscript have survived and the composition proves to be so interesting in its first version, it deserves to be brought back into circulation and performed. The missing pages have been published for the first time in the Appendix to the full score and in the orchestral parts.
The edition is based on the following sources: the autograph manuscript (Czech Museum of Music Prague), which contains revisions and corrections in various hands from a period up to the end of September 1885, the first editions of the full score, the orchestral parts, and the arrangement for piano duet, published by N. Simrock, Berlin, in October 1885. As numerous corrections in the autograph manuscript were not transferred into the proofs of the published edition, in many small details it does not represent the final version of the work. In addition, the music text in the printed parts differs from that in the full score and is evidently not based on the surviving manuscript parts which were used at the premiere. These facts enhance the value of the first edition of the full score as a source. Wherever possible, the characteristics of Dvořák’s notation, nomenclature, clefs, spelling of dynamic indications and grouping of notes have been retained.
BP
(from [t]akte 1/2013)