Continuous reworking
Bertrand Jaeger has compiled a wealth of information on Chopin's manuscripts, first editions and annotated editions. Rich bibliographies complete the publication.
Published as volume 60 in series II of the Swiss Music Research Society's publications, this clearly structured book in French presents the latest state of international Chopin research on a variety of topics. The focus is on the description of the manuscripts and the first editions published mainly in France, Germany, Austria and England. A special chapter is devoted to the first editions from Switzerland and Milan.
Since Chopin frequently made changes to the printed musical text and was busy with several variants of an actual work in progress, it is very difficult to establish a clear chronology of the undated altered editions.
Born in Fribourg in 1945, the archaeologist and Chopin specialist Bertrand Jaeger, who holds a doctorate in Egyptology, has carried out his musicological research all over the world and on the Internet in order to comb through all the important sources. The result is impressive; all the copies consulted by the author himself are described in detail with relentless meticulousness, down to the millimetre details of the formats and technical printing features. Jaeger also takes into account the dedication copies of the first editions and those with annotations owned by Chopin's pupils. The black-and-white illustrations of the title pages and the publisher's advertisements with lists of works were based on the author's collection of first and early editions, published here for the first time.
Of particular benefit to performers is the information compiled for each composition on dedicatees, the multilingual work-related bibliographies and a thematic bibliography covering both composers and terms such as meter, phrasing and rubato. The specialist articles on the Preludes op. 28 take up eight book pages, to name just one example of the impressive diligence, and list several hundred exact textual references.
Bertrand Jaeger (ed. by Pierre Goy): L'œuvre de Frédéric Chopin. Manuscrits - Partitions annotées - Bibliographie, 904 p., Fr. 149.00, Peter Lang, Bern 2020, ISBN 978-3-0343-0446-7
