Red ink on the score
As distinct from other copies of the Missa Solemnis Beethoven thoroughly reviewed the engraving model for the first edition published by the Schott publishing house in Mainz. He and his helping hand, Ferdinand Wolanek, corrected the many errors introduced into the sheet music by the writer. Instead of making their corrections in red ink, they both used pencil and brown ink because the writer had used red ink for the trombone voices in Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei. The notes for the three trombones were not written on separate lines but on the lines of the solo and choir voices and therefore had to be highlighted in colour (e.g. see image 165 and 192). While for copy BH 88 a folio paper was used, the engraving template was written on a regular-size sheet that was too small for all instrument and singing voices to have separate note systems. The two colours, however, allowed reading the parts where the trombones were played when solo singers and choir started singing, like, for example, in Dona nobis pacem (image 390). For Benedictus with its smaller instrumentation, such tricks were not needed. Here, the trombones were written on two separate lines in black. Red was also the colour used by the engraver to mark the page numbering for print with numbers in the highest note system (image 5). Benedictus shows the engraver's red orientation marks on the lines for trombone and the solo violin (image 319). (F.G.)
