Die groß besetzten Werke

Preface
Three meters of bright red. The New Mozart
Edition is certainly impressive! When it
reaches completion in time for Mozart’s
anniversary celebrations in 2006, it will
consist of no fewer than 130 hardbound red
volumes.
But the thing that makes the NMA so
outstanding in the world of music is its
editorial quality, which has set new standards
frequently copied elsewhere. When the
International Mozarteum Foundation
publicly announced its intention to launch a
complete edition of Mozart’s works in 1954,
there were many sceptics who predicted that
the huge project would founder before it truly
got underway. Yet today no one seriously
questions the unique achievement of the
NMA. The almost finished project represents
a summation of vast amounts of editorial
care, scholarly research, technical skill, and
not least of all entrepreneurial fortitude.
The result is a Mozart edition that beggars
comparison: thanks to the NMA, Mozart’s
œuvre is now available to all in a richness and
subtlety never known before.
From the very outset the editorial work has
been the sole responsibility of the Board of
Editors and their international co-workers.
No other edition of Mozart’s music has at
its disposal such a pooling of expertise, such
a dynamic group of scholars and editors.
Only in this way was it possible to produce
texts that have retained their undiminished
authority in Mozart circles for over half a
century.
“The New Mozart Edition, or Neue Mozart-
Ausgabe (NMA), offers impeccable scholarly
texts based on all available sources - primarily
Mozart’s autograph scores - while taking
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into account the needs of performers.” Thus
reads the standard preface appended to every
volume in the series. It represents a dual
claim combining two elements that seem, at
first glance, mutually contradictory: scholarly
exactitude and practical relevance. The
NMA meets its scholarly claim by rigorously
applying modern text-critical methods
in the preparation of each volume. Yet the
editorial labors are not always apparent in
the clear musical texts themselves. To gain
an impression of their true extent, users must
take the trouble to read the usually lengthy
Vorworte to each volume. Those who want an
even clearer impression are invited to consult
the associated Kritische Berichte, where they
will find exhaustive information on the source
materials and editorial decisions.
Although “impeccable scholarly texts” are
the NMA’s paramount objective, the new
edition has also unearthed areas of Mozart’s
activity that were previously overlooked:
“Mozart the Learner” in the publication of his
musical notebooks, for example, or “Mozart
the Teacher” as reflected in the composition
studies of his pupils Attwood, Freistädtler,
and Ployer. Light is also shed on Mozart’s
working methods with the publication of
lavish editions of all his surviving sketches
and fragments. Rounding off the series are
collections of documents on his life and
detailed accounts of the manuscript paper he
used to write down his music.
But what has all of this got to do with the
much-touted “practical relevance”? To quote
Karl Vötterle, the founder of the House of
Bärenreiter (1956): “As always, the scholar
needs the definitive text - the ‘urtext’ - for
his research. This goes without saying. But
now performing musicians are increasingly
tending to play the works of great composers