メモです。
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/arts/music/25tomm.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=74e48a121c28bf47&ex=1152244800
《Composers' Autograph Manuscripts at the Morgan Museum》
（The New York Times 2006年6月25日記事）
AUTOGRAPH manuscripts by master composers are, naturally, invaluable resources for music scholars and specialists. The manuscript of Chopin's Variations for Piano and Orchestra on the theme "L・ci darem la mano" from Mozart's "Don Giovanni," for example, definitively reveals Chopin's first thoughts about this ambitious early work. But examining the manuscript recently at the Morgan Library and Museum, I was struck more by what it reveals about the character of its 17-year-old composer. And this is something that all music lovers, not just specialists, can glean from seeing the score.
Chopin's penmanship is curvaceous, stylish and a bit impetuous. You imagine the music being composed in bursts of inspiration. When the right-hand piano part breaks into long-spun lines of ornamental filigree (a Chopin trademark), the notes on the page become tiny and delicate, visually reflecting the music.
The manuscript also suggests that for Chopin the piece's overall structure was an afterthought. In writing out the instrumental parts, which individually look elegant, he did not always take care to line up the measures vertically. So the bar lines running down the page are sometimes amusingly crooked.
The end of the score is enchanting to see. After the final measure, the pages are filled with doodles: cryptic text, curlicue lines, even a little sketch of what looks to be a bust of a bewigged Mozart in a formal coat with epaulets. Next to the bust is a doodled pedestal. Has Mozart, with a wry smile on his face, abandoned his pedestal?
The Morgan Library has been in the news since it reopened in late April after two years of work on a major expansion. A new building, designed by the architect Renzo Piano, is home not only to a small concert hall but also to a humidity-controlled two-story security vault for the Morgan's priceless holdings: drawings, prints, letters, literary manuscripts, rare books, ancient seals and, yes, music manuscripts.
The Morgan's repository of music manuscripts and sketches, some 1,700 items, is world renowned. There are Bach cantatas, Beethoven's "Ghost" Trio, the first two Brahms symphonies, Mahler's "Lied von der Erde," Schubert's "Winterreise," Mozart's "Haffner" Symphony and ・according to J. Rigbie Turner, the curator of the collection for 34 years ・perhaps the most extensive collection of Gilbert and Sullivan manuscripts anywhere.
For a library, maintaining a collection of invaluable manuscripts and documents is a difficult balancing act. The top priority is to preserve and protect the documents. But what about public access? Who gets to handle and study these treasures?
Mr. Turner is chiefly responsible for those decisions with the music manuscripts. Inevitably, subjective judgment is involved. Though he seldom considers pleas from students below the graduate level, he honors all requests from scholars and musicians who demonstrate a compelling reason to see the original sources.
"The main criterion," he said, "is, have you exhausted all the other resources? Facsimiles, reproductions? Is there a reason that only seeing the original manuscript will suffice?"
Those granted access to a manuscript view it individually, by appointment, in the library's new Sherman Fairchild Reading Room. Located on the top floor of the new building, this inviting room has plentiful work stations and, best of all, natural light from a translucent ceiling.
Much expertise and considerable expense are involved in maintaining a rare document and manuscript collection. In February the Juilliard School received a gift of 139 original manuscripts and annotated first editions: works by Bach, Purcell, Schumann, Wagner, Stravinsky, Schnittke and more. The school's well-used library now must cope with the expensive and labor-intensive demands of preserving and controlling access to priceless manuscripts.
Joseph W. Polisi, the president of Juilliard, has pledged that the school will rise to the challenge. If Juilliard wants to see how it's done, Mr. Polisi should take a delegation of librarians and faculty members to the Morgan.
Yet the Morgan's new facilities have necessitated a change in policy regarding access. Before the renovation, the music manuscripts were kept in a smaller separate vault that Mr. Turner controlled. Some years ago the conductor Kurt Masur spent hours in the vault examining manuscripts he took off the shelf, with Mr. Rigbie at his side.
In the new building the Morgan's manuscripts from all fields are stored together. Only curators are allowed in. Mr. Masur could still examine a manuscript at the Morgan, but he would have to make his request in advance to Mr. Rigbie and study it in the reading room.
The tenor Ian Bostridge also visited the Morgan a few years ago, when he was preparing to record Schubert's song cycle "Winterreise." He spent hours looking at the manuscript and also that of the posthumously assembled cycle "Schwanengesang," another Schubert treasure the Morgan maintains. (The collection's contents are listed on the library's Web site, www.morganlibrary.org, though navigating the online catalog takes patience.)
The public can see the rotating display of manuscripts in the commodious new exhibition room. The current show, "Masterworks From the Morgan," which runs through Sept. 3, includes Mozart's "Haffner" Symphony, Beethoven's Violin Sonata in G (Op. 96), Brahms's First Symphony, Schubert's "Winterreise," Chopin's hugely popular Polonaise in A flat (Op. 53) and Mahler's Fifth Symphony (opened to the beginning of the famous Adagietto).
My favorite manuscript in the exhibition is the daunting full score of Schoenberg's "Gurrelieder," written for huge orchestra and chorus, and vocal soloists. To accommodate all the instrumental and vocal parts, even on oversize pages, Schoenberg had to notate using small staffs and notes. The score looks like a chart for a major military invasion, which, if you think about it, is one way to describe Schoenberg's astounding work.
The value of a manuscript in shedding light on a composer's original intentions is often overstated. Composers routinely change their works after they hear them played and gather feedback from performers. A composer's revisions often result in a better piece.
When music historians uncover original manuscripts, they will often have discovered a version of the piece that the composer later found to be flawed. But what always comes through in an autograph manuscript is the personality of the composer. I especially value seeing autographs of the great masters because they poignantly humanize their creators. You are reminded that these towering figures were hard-working, sometimes frantic professionals, struggling to realize their visions and meet deadlines.
Take the manuscript of the Schubert impromptus for piano, among the items I examined at the Morgan. For all the tales of Schubert's grinding life of economic hardship and despair, his notation is confident and thoroughly professional, though filled with handy shortcuts, like symbols to indicate that some riff or accompaniment figure is to be repeated.
On the other hand the manuscript of the slow movement of Brahms's Symphony No. 1 suggests that, as history tells us, Brahms anguished over this work. His notation is anxious and messy, littered with squiggles and corrections. But all is peace and light in the manuscript of Grieg's wistfully lovely Five Songs (Op. 70). Grieg was a generous soul and an accessible composer, qualities reflected in his manuscript, which is readable, open and unpretentious.
The manuscript of Stravinsky's melodrama "Perséphone" looks as beautiful on the page as it sounds in performance. Even the staffs on the page were drawn by hand, with an old-fashioned five-pronged pen and a straight-edge ruler.
Looking through manuscripts at the Morgan, I was reminded that along with the art of writing letters, the art of writing manuscripts by hand has nearly disappeared. Most composers these days use computer programs, a major advance in efficiency but a loss for posterity. You cannot imagine any library preserving the first printout of a composition notated on a computer, which makes the Morgan's collection seem all the more invaluable.
***
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/arts/music/25tomm.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=74e48a121c28bf47&ex=1152244800
《Composers' Autograph Manuscripts at the Morgan Museum》
（The New York Times 2006年6月25日記事）
AUTOGRAPH manuscripts by master composers are, naturally, invaluable resources for music scholars and specialists. The manuscript of Chopin's Variations for Piano and Orchestra on the theme "L・ci darem la mano" from Mozart's "Don Giovanni," for example, definitively reveals Chopin's first thoughts about this ambitious early work. But examining the manuscript recently at the Morgan Library and Museum, I was struck more by what it reveals about the character of its 17-year-old composer. And this is something that all music lovers, not just specialists, can glean from seeing the score.
Chopin's penmanship is curvaceous, stylish and a bit impetuous. You imagine the music being composed in bursts of inspiration. When the right-hand piano part breaks into long-spun lines of ornamental filigree (a Chopin trademark), the notes on the page become tiny and delicate, visually reflecting the music.
The manuscript also suggests that for Chopin the piece's overall structure was an afterthought. In writing out the instrumental parts, which individually look elegant, he did not always take care to line up the measures vertically. So the bar lines running down the page are sometimes amusingly crooked.
The end of the score is enchanting to see. After the final measure, the pages are filled with doodles: cryptic text, curlicue lines, even a little sketch of what looks to be a bust of a bewigged Mozart in a formal coat with epaulets. Next to the bust is a doodled pedestal. Has Mozart, with a wry smile on his face, abandoned his pedestal?
The Morgan Library has been in the news since it reopened in late April after two years of work on a major expansion. A new building, designed by the architect Renzo Piano, is home not only to a small concert hall but also to a humidity-controlled two-story security vault for the Morgan's priceless holdings: drawings, prints, letters, literary manuscripts, rare books, ancient seals and, yes, music manuscripts.
The Morgan's repository of music manuscripts and sketches, some 1,700 items, is world renowned. There are Bach cantatas, Beethoven's "Ghost" Trio, the first two Brahms symphonies, Mahler's "Lied von der Erde," Schubert's "Winterreise," Mozart's "Haffner" Symphony and ・according to J. Rigbie Turner, the curator of the collection for 34 years ・perhaps the most extensive collection of Gilbert and Sullivan manuscripts anywhere.
For a library, maintaining a collection of invaluable manuscripts and documents is a difficult balancing act. The top priority is to preserve and protect the documents. But what about public access? Who gets to handle and study these treasures?
Mr. Turner is chiefly responsible for those decisions with the music manuscripts. Inevitably, subjective judgment is involved. Though he seldom considers pleas from students below the graduate level, he honors all requests from scholars and musicians who demonstrate a compelling reason to see the original sources.
"The main criterion," he said, "is, have you exhausted all the other resources? Facsimiles, reproductions? Is there a reason that only seeing the original manuscript will suffice?"
Those granted access to a manuscript view it individually, by appointment, in the library's new Sherman Fairchild Reading Room. Located on the top floor of the new building, this inviting room has plentiful work stations and, best of all, natural light from a translucent ceiling.
Much expertise and considerable expense are involved in maintaining a rare document and manuscript collection. In February the Juilliard School received a gift of 139 original manuscripts and annotated first editions: works by Bach, Purcell, Schumann, Wagner, Stravinsky, Schnittke and more. The school's well-used library now must cope with the expensive and labor-intensive demands of preserving and controlling access to priceless manuscripts.
Joseph W. Polisi, the president of Juilliard, has pledged that the school will rise to the challenge. If Juilliard wants to see how it's done, Mr. Polisi should take a delegation of librarians and faculty members to the Morgan.
Yet the Morgan's new facilities have necessitated a change in policy regarding access. Before the renovation, the music manuscripts were kept in a smaller separate vault that Mr. Turner controlled. Some years ago the conductor Kurt Masur spent hours in the vault examining manuscripts he took off the shelf, with Mr. Rigbie at his side.
In the new building the Morgan's manuscripts from all fields are stored together. Only curators are allowed in. Mr. Masur could still examine a manuscript at the Morgan, but he would have to make his request in advance to Mr. Rigbie and study it in the reading room.
The tenor Ian Bostridge also visited the Morgan a few years ago, when he was preparing to record Schubert's song cycle "Winterreise." He spent hours looking at the manuscript and also that of the posthumously assembled cycle "Schwanengesang," another Schubert treasure the Morgan maintains. (The collection's contents are listed on the library's Web site, www.morganlibrary.org, though navigating the online catalog takes patience.)
The public can see the rotating display of manuscripts in the commodious new exhibition room. The current show, "Masterworks From the Morgan," which runs through Sept. 3, includes Mozart's "Haffner" Symphony, Beethoven's Violin Sonata in G (Op. 96), Brahms's First Symphony, Schubert's "Winterreise," Chopin's hugely popular Polonaise in A flat (Op. 53) and Mahler's Fifth Symphony (opened to the beginning of the famous Adagietto).
My favorite manuscript in the exhibition is the daunting full score of Schoenberg's "Gurrelieder," written for huge orchestra and chorus, and vocal soloists. To accommodate all the instrumental and vocal parts, even on oversize pages, Schoenberg had to notate using small staffs and notes. The score looks like a chart for a major military invasion, which, if you think about it, is one way to describe Schoenberg's astounding work.
The value of a manuscript in shedding light on a composer's original intentions is often overstated. Composers routinely change their works after they hear them played and gather feedback from performers. A composer's revisions often result in a better piece.
When music historians uncover original manuscripts, they will often have discovered a version of the piece that the composer later found to be flawed. But what always comes through in an autograph manuscript is the personality of the composer. I especially value seeing autographs of the great masters because they poignantly humanize their creators. You are reminded that these towering figures were hard-working, sometimes frantic professionals, struggling to realize their visions and meet deadlines.
Take the manuscript of the Schubert impromptus for piano, among the items I examined at the Morgan. For all the tales of Schubert's grinding life of economic hardship and despair, his notation is confident and thoroughly professional, though filled with handy shortcuts, like symbols to indicate that some riff or accompaniment figure is to be repeated.
On the other hand the manuscript of the slow movement of Brahms's Symphony No. 1 suggests that, as history tells us, Brahms anguished over this work. His notation is anxious and messy, littered with squiggles and corrections. But all is peace and light in the manuscript of Grieg's wistfully lovely Five Songs (Op. 70). Grieg was a generous soul and an accessible composer, qualities reflected in his manuscript, which is readable, open and unpretentious.
The manuscript of Stravinsky's melodrama "Perséphone" looks as beautiful on the page as it sounds in performance. Even the staffs on the page were drawn by hand, with an old-fashioned five-pronged pen and a straight-edge ruler.
Looking through manuscripts at the Morgan, I was reminded that along with the art of writing letters, the art of writing manuscripts by hand has nearly disappeared. Most composers these days use computer programs, a major advance in efficiency but a loss for posterity. You cannot imagine any library preserving the first printout of a composition notated on a computer, which makes the Morgan's collection seem all the more invaluable.
