Editions
The first published score of 1767, together with Handel's documented adaptations and recompositions of various movements, has been the basis for many performing versions since the composer's lifetime. Modern performances which seek authenticity tend to be based on one of three 20th-century performing editions. These all use different methods of numbering movements:
- The Novello Edition, edited by Watkins Shaw, first published as a vocal score in 1959, revised and issued 1965. This uses the numbering first used in the Prout edition of 1902.
- The Bärenreiter Edition, edited by John Tobin, published in 1965, which forms the basis of the Messiah numbering in Bernd Baselt's catalogue (HWV) of Handel's works, published in 1984.
- The Peters Edition, edited by Donald Burrows, vocal score published 1972, which uses an adaptation of the numbering devised by Kurt Soldan.
The edition edited by Friedrich Chrysander and Max Seiffert for the Deutsche Händel-Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1902) is not a general performing edition, but has been used as a basis of scholarship and research.
Read more about this topic: Messiah (Handel)
Famous quotes containing the word editions:
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)