ABSTRACT
Hans von Bulow’s edition provoked from H. Schenker what he himself described as his ‘frequent and energetic criticism’. Examining the basis of these criticisms may lead to a better understanding of Schenker’s own editorial work - work which had an importance within Schenker’s total output that theorists, if not musicologists, have tended to underestimate. The modern editor has to arbitrate between two editorial traditions, one deriving from an autograph score that was supposedly in Johann Nicolaus Forkel’s possession, the other from the Bach-Gesellschaft Werke; Bulow’s edition depends primarily on the former, Schenker’s on the latter. Schenker’s principal aim as an editor was to be faithful to the composer’s intentions. Schenker’s strongly metaphysical image of Music speaking through the composer is a vivid illustration of the system of values and beliefs – in a word, the ideology – upon which his concept of the definitive text was based.
