ABSTRACT
For Camille Saint-Saens, Rameau was quite simply, 'the greatest musical genius that France has ever produced'. In fact, Jean Bonnerot is referring to Saint-Saens's work as general editor, for it turns out that the editor of the Zoroastre volume was to be dIndy. The Œuvres completes has the distinction of being the first collected edition devoted to any French composer and, for all its limitations, stands as a magnificent monument to Saint-Saens's commitment to the Rameau cause. When the publishing house of Durand-Salabert-Eschig was bought by BMG in 2001, a number of its archival documents were placed on permanent loan at the Bibliotheque nationale de France. These include two of the scores used in 1914 when a projected edition of Rameau's opera Zoroastre was being prepared for theŒuvres completes. A professional scribe made a more or less literal transcription of the principal source, adopting modern clefs but retaining other features of the original notation, including ornaments and 'ungrammatical' rhythms.
