by Christin Heitmann, Katharina Herwig and Freia Hoffmann

Louise Farrenc (1804 to 1875) is equally important to French music history as a pianist, composer and music scholar. With her orchestral and chamber music, she represented a musical genre that was rarely cultivated in Paris around 1850. In order to make her compositions accessible again for concert halls and music research, the German Research Foundation (DFG) is funding an edition of her works at the University of Oldenburg.

Johannes Brahms is said to have perceived two events in his life as "truly epochal": the founding of the German Reich in 1871 and the publication of the Bach Complete Edition (1851-1899). Although Brahms was certainly accentuating a reference to music history that was specific to him, his statement can also remind us in general that until well into our century it was by no means a matter of course that the great works of music history or even lesser-known compositions were available in printed editions. It was not until the second half of the 19th century that music historiography entered the great era of sifting through and philologically cataloguing what was then revered as "cultural heritage" and considered worth preserving. With considerable human and financial resources, multi-volume complete editions were begun: Beethoven and Palestrina (1862), Mendelssohn (1874), Chopin (1878), Schubert (1883), Schütz (1885). However, it is also striking how late other composers came to enjoy the benefits of such a research effort: Monteverdi (1926), Tchaikovsky (1940), Vivaldi (1947), Telemann (1950) or Gluck (1951).

Today, amateurs are used to finding almost all music not only on recordings, but also in printed grades, whether in libraries or in shops. However, musicians who seek out compositions beyond the usual repertoire or musicologists who want to research special topics find that the history of musical editions has favoured a certain selection of music. Criteria were, for example, the long-held image of the great masters, a limited canon of works favoured in concert programmes and opera schedules, the music market and the respective reception-historical, national and cultural-political accentuations.

Musical styles and genres that were not "memorable" in this sense include, for example, popular music of all kinds, such as dance and light music, theatre and film music. But we also search in vain for compositions by women in libraries today. Since the New Women's Movement made us curious in this respect and sensitised the music-interested public, there is usually an awareness that Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Ethel Smyth or even Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi, Marianne Martinez and Luise Adolpha Le Beau composed beautiful and interesting music. But where are the corresponding editions of their works? So far there is only one female composer to whom a critical complete edition has been dedicated. It is - and this is almost a curiosity in view of the qualitative paucity of her music - Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, who, in addition to her literary works, also left behind some 70 songs and song arrangements, four choral movements and fragments of three Singspiele. The fact that the new 27-volume Droste edition contains two volumes of music is a good example of the decisive (and exclusive) significance of reception and evaluation traditions.

All the more necessary, surprising and gratifying was the decision by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in 1995 to fund an edition of Louise Farrenc's works at the University of Oldenburg. Until then, this French composer was at best an insider tip for those interested in chamber music. Many of her compositions for smaller ensembles had already been recorded on CD or by radio stations, including two piano trios, a cello sonata and a nonet; two quintets for piano and strings in particular had attracted interest when a recording by cpo was awarded the German Record Critics' Prize in 1994. But of the orchestral works (three symphonies and two concert overtures), only the 3rd Symphony was known through several performances in Germany and Switzerland. And although musicians would have liked to include Louise Farrenc's compositions in their concert programmes, this was hardly possible: grades of only one work (a piano trio) were commercially available, namely as a reprint of a 19th century print.

However, the DFG's decision was based less on a practical performance interest than on a scholarly one. As a contemporary of the Mendelssohns, Schumann, Chopin and Liszt, Louise Farrenc represents a classical-romantic compositional tradition within French music history - as a counterpoint to Hector Berlioz, so to speak - which has been little researched to date. Cultivated above all by circles around the academic teachers at the Paris National Conservatory, this tradition was still very much in the spirit of a universal European musical language. It was only in the second half of the 19th century, particularly with the war of 1870/71, that the need for demarcation, efforts to develop national musical styles, and the insinuations of mentality and musical aesthetics emerged, as can be seen in the aims of Wagner and Debussy, for example. Louise Farrenc was still unfamiliar with such thinking. As a composition pupil of Anton Reicha, who came from Bohemia and trained in Bonn and Vienna, as an excellent connoisseur of Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn, and later also as a specialist in early music, she considered it her task to make classical works known in France and to further develop their stylistic devices in her own compositions. She did this, for example, by combining classical forms with new instrumentation, e.g. in her Nonet for winds and strings and in the Sextet for winds and piano. Here she freed the wind instruments from the tradition of divertimenti and serenades and incorporated them into more sophisticated stylistic and genre contexts. Another special feature of Farrenc's compositional style was probably also inspired by her teacher Reicha: the avoidance of dramatic contrasts and dualistic forms. Unlike the theorists of Beethoven's German successors, in his compositional theory Anton Reicha did not recommend two opposing themes as starting material, but rather two or more "idées mères", musical ideas that stimulate the imagination. However, Farrenc's variations and thematic treatment are again clearly modelled on the Viennese composers. The distribution of her works was considerable during her lifetime. Of 51 numbered operas, around 40, mostly piano works, were printed, in many cases in France as well as in England and Germany. There is evidence of performances of the (unprinted) symphonies and overtures in France, Denmark, Belgium and Switzerland. Louise Farrenc was versatile and productive as a composer, continuously honed her technique and style and - unlike other female musicians of her time - had a decidedly professional self-image as a composer. Nevertheless, unlike Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn, she was almost completely forgotten by the public after her death. This can also be explained by the fact that, unlike her German colleagues, she could not go down in music history as the wife or sister of a famous musician and thus in a typical, socially accepted female role. Her music remained unperformed for about a century.

In collaboration with the Florian Noetzel publishing house in Wilhelmshaven, the Farrenc Research Centre will publish the orchestral and chamber music as well as a representative selection of the piano music by the year 2000. Compared to other editions of her works, the effort involved in obtaining the sources is relatively low: the composer's estate, which includes all surviving autographs, is located in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. Some original prints, i.e. editions authorised by the composer, are also kept there. Research in other European libraries has been fruitful in some cases (Brussels, Liège, London, Berlin, Dresden), but in others it has been necessary to dispense with a comparison with prints (documented in contemporary sources) because no more copies can be found anywhere. According to the conception of the edition, the editorial treatment should fulfil both practical performance and scholarly requirements. For example, scholars who wish to study the works analytically are informed in a critical apparatus about the sources on which the edition is based, which corrections the composer made in her own transcription, how autographs differ from authorised prints and which - obvious - typographical errors the editor has corrected. If an edition is also to serve practical performance purposes, it must be clear in the musical text, and in certain cases it must standardise performance markings (dynamics, articulation). An unedited reproduction of the source text, for example in the form of an Urtext edition, would make the rehearsal work of an orchestra more difficult, because the participants would have to spend a considerable amount of time agreeing on the necessary adjustments. Editorial additions of this kind are, of course, labelled as such in print.

A third field of work in the edition is the clarification of dating, compositional circumstances and occasions, premières (dates, resonance) and other contemporary performances. In the case of Louise Farrenc, fundamental preliminary work has been done by an American dissertation (Bea Friedland: Louise Farrenc, 1804-1875. Composer, Performer, Scholar, Ann Arbor 1975/1980). In the meantime, extensive additions and corrections have been made to the state of research documented there.

It would certainly be presumptuous to hope that someone will one day say that the Farrenc edition was of particular importance for his life, just as Brahms and his contemporaries felt about the great editions of works of their time. But the Farrenc edition has also met with some resonance, from the experience that many people interested in music are following the project with excitement. Especially since the publisher has been offering a subscription service worldwide, the Oldenburg research centre has received numerous requests for performance material for concerts and CD recordings. Since 1997, the Hanover Radio Philharmonic Orchestra of the NDR has been preparing recordings of all the symphonies and overtures for the cpo record company. Ensembles in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, England and Canada have included works by Louise Farrenc in their repertoire, and further chamber music works are expected to be recorded on CD by the end of 1998.

On 11 June 1998, in connection with the inauguration of the new lecture hall centre at the University of Oldenburg, one of the two symphonies, which have not been heard for around 150 years, is to be performed in public for the first time. The setting will be a symphony concert by the Hanover Radio Philharmonic Orchestra of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk under the direction of Johannes Goritzki.

The authors

Christin Heitmann and Katharina Herwig are doctoral students and research assistants at the Farrenc-Edition in Department 2 (Communication and Aesthetics). Katharina Herwig passed her first State Examination for Grammar School Teaching (Music, German) in Oldenburg in 1995. Christin Heitmann completed her studies in musicology at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn in 1995 with a master's thesis on the chamber music of Louise Farrenc. Prof. Dr Freia Hoffmann , a university lecturer in music education and musicological gender studies in Oldenburg since 1992 and head of the Farrenc project, received her doctorate after studying at the University of Music and the University of Freiburg. She then worked as a radio journalist and music teacher. She has been involved in music teacher training at the universities of Hildesheim and Oldenburg since 1980. In 1988, she habilitated with a thesis on "Instrument and Body. Die musizierende Frau in der bürgerlichen Kultur" (Frankfurt/Main and Leipzig 1991). In 1993/94 she was a member of the Lower Saxony Women's Research Commission. From 1990 to 1997 she was co-editor of the journal "Musik und Unterricht."