Score Reading: Misprints

A passage from the fugue of Franck’s Prelude, Fugue and Variation in B minor, op. 18 is quoted above. I believe it contains a rather serious misprint in the highlighted measure.

Misprints in musical scores can occur for a number of reasons: a slip of the copyist’s pen from autograph to 1st edition or to any subsequent edition, a copyist’s misinterpretation of the composer’s notation, misreading a clef, an editor’s decision, or in rare cases, a mistake on the part of the composer.

When the composer’s autograph is not available, how are we to know which edition to use? Can we trust so-called ‘urtext’ editions implicitly? Fortunately, two or more editions are available for most repertoire, although many performances are indeed based on a single source. It is also fortunate that misprints are extremely rare. What is unfortunate is that they can easily go undetected.

The alleged misprint in the Franck excerpt occurs in the soprano voice - the eighth note D should be a major 6th higher - B on the 3rd line. The evidence supporting this assertion is quite clear. In the measure in question, the soprano voice appears to re-enter, after a brief rest, with two additional connected statements of the characteristic 8th-note motive which is part of the fugue subject. [Actually, the previously existing soprano voice either becomes the alto, or it splits into two voices on the downbeat of the measure - notice the change in stem direction from the 1st to the 2nd measure of the system]. If the D is correct as it appears, this would be the only statement of the motive in the entire fugue which does not conform melodically to all its other appearances. There is more. The voice leading as it stands involves a pair of parallel unisons, again the only such occurrence - in this case of faulty counterpoint - in the fugue. Finally, the augmented 4th, D to G sharp, sounds disturbing, yet the piece is full of augmented and diminished intervals, both melodically and harmonically, which sound perfectly natural.

There are many instances in various editions of Franck’s organ music in which I believe there are misprints of this sort. As responsible musicians, we need to be on the lookout for this potential problem in our daily musical studies. This is especially true in the more complex chromatic styles and those of the 20th century, but we can never be too careful, whatever the style or composer.