The craft of the publisher (2021–2024)

Previous research on Beethoven's business relationships with his main publishers has mainly been based on the composer's perspective. His own statements usually reflect very impressively the composer's anger about too many mistakes, about corrections that were not made or only poorly made, or about the premature sale of faulty editions. This results in a one-sided image of publishers who worked badly and paid too little attention to the composer's artistic interests, and also feeds into the proverbial ‘Beethoven myth’ of the genius composer who considered necessary everyday tasks to be a nuisance and only carried them out himself in an emergency and with reluctance.

But what was the collaboration with Beethoven like from the publishers' point of view? What aspects and factors - in addition to the author's will - did they have to take into account in their decisions and work processes? How did they reconcile artistic and commercial interests? What conclusions can be drawn about the relationship between Beethoven and his publishers from this broader perspective? And what new perspectives does this provide on the trade in music in the 19th century and musical life in general? How did publishers assess the music market and how did they influence it?

The aim of the research project ‘The publisher's craft’ is to investigate the processes involved in the creation of authorised editions of Beethoven's works and their subsequent editions, which were created by revising the engraving plates after the publication of the first edition, and to take a decidedly publisher's perspective. The project is based on the premise that all historical editions of a work contribute to its transmission history, regardless of how ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ the printed music text is. It is therefore not a matter of judgement, but of researching the historical facts and the responsibilities of the various actors in as much detail as possible.

In order to ensure a reliable source basis for the study, individual editions from selected publishers with whom Beethoven worked closely will first be compared in as many copies as possible in order to obtain a precise picture of the number of plate stages and their distinguishing features (plate corrections, plate repairs). This represents a significant reassessment in the differentiation of editions, which in previous research was primarily based on changes to the title page (so-called title editions). The text comparison of the music pages is carried out with the help of the ‘CollAna collation and analysis tool for printed music’, with which digital copies can be superimposed on the screen, making the time-consuming character-by-character comparison much easier.

At the same time, the knowledge gained in this way will be contextualised and expanded on the basis of archival documents, reviews and other journalistic contributions, advertisements, publishers' catalogues, etc., so that new insights can be gained both into the working methods of the publishers and into the collaboration between composer and publisher.

The results will be presented for discussion in lectures and presented to the public in a comprehensive study. The various editions and their disc stages will be documented in an open access database, which will be made available at the end of the project.

Yuval Dvoran (since August 2023), Christin Heitmann, Till Reininghaus (until July 2023) and Heide Volckmar-Waschk (since June 2023) are or were working as research assistants on the project, which is being carried out at the Beethoven Archive under the direction of Christine Siegert, and Jana Seifert (until July 2023) and Ahrim Song (since August 2023) are working as student assistants. It is funded for three years by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for the Promotion of Science Cologne (Ref. 10.21.1.030KU). Axel Beer (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) has been secured as a cooperation partner.