Keeping score: why are the scores of underrepresented composers riddled with mistakes?

If we need a score of Beethoven piano sonatas or Brahms string quartets, we might spend a while deliberating over which of the various editions to buy – many musicians will choose an ‘Urtext’ edition, which aims to present as faithfully as possible the composer’s markings; others might choose a version with more editorial suggestions, helpful fingerings and other annotations. Fortunately, these days we can generally be fairly confident that, whichever edition we end up with, the notes which Beethoven or Brahms wrote will be accurately represented.

Whether in our solo careers, as a duo, or with our Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective (pictured below), we will always love playing Beethoven and Brahms, but we also love playing the music of Florence Price and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. It can often feel especially meaningful to share works which are not heard as often as they deserve to be, and one of the rare positive musical developments during the pandemic was that musicians felt they had more freedom to explore works which fall outside the standard canon. This was partly because there was no longer so much pressure from concert promoters to programme the most popular works in order to put ‘bums on seats’ (during lockdowns, with concert halls closed, there weren’t any seats to put bums on!), but it was also not unrelated to the growing awareness of racial and social injustices in the world – it’s impossible to ignore the fact that many (though certainly not all) unfairly neglected composers were either female or non-white.

Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective perform at Wigmore Hall ©Wigmore Hall

And so we found ourselves ordering more scores of Price and Coleridge-Taylor, naturally hoping that the available editions would arrive with the same quality guarantees as our Brahms and Beethoven scores. Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth.

In the weeks leading up to Kaleidoscope’s recordings of Florence Price’s Piano Quintet and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Nonet (both for Chandos), Tom spent many days trying to correct a vast catalogue of errors in the published editions – some were very obvious (the very first bar of the Coleridge-Taylor Nonet, a resonant F minor chord, contained notes which clearly didn’t belong to the harmony), while others needed more detailed detective work, and only became apparent as we got to know the music more intimately.

Upon realising just how many errors there seemed to be in the Price Quintet score, we contacted the library of University of Arkansas Special Collections Department, where Price’s original manuscript is held. This enabled us to spot and correct a huge number of mistakes – our errata list runs to 150 significant misprints (which we’re always happy to share with other musicians), and we’re quite sure we didn’t catch everything. The editor admitted that the score had been produced in a hurry and apologised for the errors; since then, a ‘revised and corrected’ edition has been produced by the same publisher, ClarNan Editions, though sadly some mistakes still remain. In fairness to the editors, Price’s own autograph undoubtedly contains some of the composer’s own mistakes – perhaps Price herself was in a hurry to prepare the parts – and often there are discrepancies between the full score and the string parts. To produce a new, accurate, scholarly edition takes a significant amount of time – and it needs an editor with an intimate knowledge and understanding of Price’s composing style, so that informed decisions and suggestions can be made.

Elena Urioste and Tom Poster worked to resolve the more obvious mistakes within the inaccurate editions, as well as the ones which required 'more detailed detective work' ©Johnny Millar

The Philadelphia Orchestra encountered similar problems before their celebrated recording of Price’s symphonies, employing ‘three sets of eyes/hands/ears and many, many hours’ to try to spot all the errors in the printed parts. Afterwards, Schirmer – the publisher which has acquired Price’s catalogue – agreed to re-engrave the materials with the corrections made by the orchestra. Sadly, when requests or complaints come from musicians without the influence of the Philadelphia Orchestra, publishers are often far less receptive.

In the case of the Coleridge-Taylor Nonet, the currently available printed edition (Musica Mundana) contains major misprints on every page, and there are some pages where every single bar contains a misprint. As the autograph score for the Nonet is freely available online via the RCM library, we were again able to correct literally hundreds of wrong notes in the Musica Mundana edition prior to Kaleidoscope’s recording. It wasn’t just wrong notes – there were countless incorrect rhythms, inaccurate dynamics, missing articulations and accidentals, tempo markings in completely the wrong places, and entire lines of the score where one of the parts has been left out. The layout also presented a problem: some of the movements start on the last bar of a page.

Tom’s correspondence with Musica Mundana revealed that they’d taken an older edition, scanned it into a computer, and never corrected the resulting errors the computer had made. The managing director also admitted that bringing the editions up to date ‘needs time’ – time which surely should have been spent before putting the editions on sale! When we pointed out that this approach really wasn’t doing justice to this wonderful composer, we received no further reply.

One might imagine that such a poorly produced edition would at least be accompanied by a bargain price tag, but to add insult to injury, Musica Mundana’s Coleridge-Taylor editions are among the most expensive scores we’ve ever come across. The Nonet costs £265 for score and parts; by comparison, a set of parts for Mendelssohn’s Octet will set you back about £30. Where a piece has only one available edition, it seems as if some publishers choose to ignore the fact that disproportionate purchase or hire costs are thwarting musicians’ dreams to perform lesser-known repertoire.

Pianist Alexandra Dariescu had to abandon her performance of Price’s Piano Concerto altogether, when it was discovered that the score and parts would be hugely expensive ©Nick Rutter

Pianist Alexandra Dariescu (pictured above) was due to give the Romanian premiere of Price’s Piano Concerto earlier this year, coupled with Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. However, when the orchestra discovered that the score and parts for the Price were five times as expensive as the Rachmaninoff, they insisted the Price was replaced by another work. As Dariescu says, ‘It’s hard enough convincing promoters and conductors to take a chance and programme unknown works by female composers, but when a premium is charged for the materials, it’ll simply be impossible to play this repertoire and it feels like we’re taking a giant step backwards.’ Conductor Chris Hopkins reports that hiring the orchestral parts for Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto costs twenty times as much as Robert Schumann’s, and laments that he has ‘just spent a week making enquiries about dozens of pieces on the wish list for next season, crossing lots of repertoire off that never gets played because the hire fees are so ridiculous.’ It’s hard to escape the thought that sometimes charging a quarter of the price could result in ten times as many performances of a work.

Especially where music is still in copyright (which doesn’t apply to Coleridge-Taylor, but does currently apply to Florence Price, and of course to all living composers), it goes without saying that we appreciate the need for composers and their publishers to be fairly remunerated. But in an age when so many younger musicians in particular are looking to champion neglected voices, it sometimes feels as if certain publishers are not on our side. The combination of crazily expensive costs and shockingly inaccurate editions (necessitating performers doing the work which editors should have done) means that musicians are often forced to make programming decisions for pragmatic rather than artistic reasons. In this era of brutal funding cuts, the end result is that only those musicians with generous financial means are able to play music by under-represented composers; ultimately it means that little-heard music risks becoming never-heard.

Great music needs to be shared, and we should all be doing everything we can to make that possible. It’s not only Beethoven and Brahms that deserve accurate, affordable printed editions – all composers need this level of respect if we’re to allow musicians to do justice to their works, and to share the beauty and joy of their music.

Pianist Tom Poster and violinist Elena Urioste are joint founders of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective as well as leading vibrant solo careers and performing as a duo. Elena Urioste will return to the Proms next week with a performance of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor' Violin Concerto in G minor on 19 July.​