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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
In the past decade the eighteenth-century London music publisher John Walsh has been subject to a new evaluation with regard to his pirated editions and deliberate misattributions, especially of the music of George Frideric Handel. That Walsh's attributions were anything but trustworthy had already been recognized in the eighteenth century: a surviving copy (London, British Library, BM g.74.d) of his first edition of the Sonates pour un traversiere un violon ou hautbois con basso continuo composées par G. F. Handel (c.1730), which, as Donald Burrows and Terence Best have shown, was provided with a title-page designed to simulate that of Jeanne Roger, bears the manuscript inscription ‘NB This is not Mr. Handel's’ in an eighteenth-century hand at the beginning of the tenth and twelfth sonatas, precisely those that Walsh removed in his second edition of this collection (c. 1731–2), advertised on the title-page as being ‘more Corect [sic] than the former Edition’. In the second edition Walsh substituted two equally questionable works in their place, each of which bears the handwritten inscription ‘Not Mr. Handel's Solo’ in a copy in the British Library (BM g.74.h). Two of the sonatas attributed to Handel in Walsh's Six Solos, Four for a German Flute and a Bass and Two for a Violin with a Thorough Bass … Composed by Mr Handel, Sigr Geminiani, Sigr Somis, Sigr Brivio (1730; in A minor and B minor) are also possibly spurious, while three of the four movements of the remaining sonata attributed to Handel in this collection (in E minor) are movements arranged from his other instrumental works. And in 1734 Johann Joachim Quantz, to whom Walsh devoted four volumes of solo sonatas (1730–44), complained of the publication of spurious and corrupted works:
There has been printed in London and in Amsterdam under the name of the [present] author, but without his knowledge, 12 sonatas for the transverse flute and bass divided into two books. I am obliged to advertise to the public that only the first, second, fourth, fifth and sixth [sonatas] from the first book, and the first three from the second book, are his [Quantz's] compositions; and that he furthermore wrote them years ago, and besides they have, due to the negligence of the copyist or the printer, gross errors including the omission of entire bars, and that he does not sanction the printing of a collection that has no relationship with the present publication that he sets before the public.
I am grateful to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst for generous grants that supported my research for this study in England and Germany during the summer of 1990.Google Scholar
1 Burrows, Donald, ‘Walsh's Editions of Handel's Opera 1–5: The Texts and their Sources’, Music in Eighteenth-Century England: Essays in Memory of Charles Cudworth, ed. Christopher Hogwood and Richard Luckett (Cambridge, 1983), 79–102 (pp. 81–3), and Terence Best, ‘Handel's Chamber Music: Sources, Chronology and Authenticity’, Early Music, 13 (1985), 476–99 (pp. 481–2), show that the edition was issued from Walsh's workshop, and that Walsh forged the title-page to appear as though it were the work of Jeanne Roger. A similar case obtains in Walsh's first edition of Handel's trio sonatas op. 2. Walsh forged Roger title-pages for his editions of other composers besides Handel. His edition of Sonata a flauto solo … Monsieur Galliard opera prima (c.1730, copy in British Library, BM g.422[2]) bears a title-page intended to look as though it were a Roger publication, complete with a fake plate number (No. 114, a plate number that Estienne Roger had used for a collection of sonatas by dall'Abaco c. 1708–12). See William Charles Smith and Charles Humphries, A Bibliography of the Musical Works Published by fohn Walsh, 1721–1766 (London, 1968), 148, and François Lesure, Bibliographie des éditions musicales publiées par Estienne Roger et Michel-Charles Le Cène (Amsterdam, 1696–1743) (Paris, 1969), 64. Jeanne Roger had died in 1722; by the time of the publication of the Handel and Galliard collections the firm belonged to Michel-Charles Le Cène, although volumes continued to be issued with the Roger imprint. See The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), s.v. ‘Roger, Estienne’. For a discussion of another instance of Walsh forging a Roger title-page for a Handel collection, see Best, ‘Handel's Chamber Music’, 482.Google Scholar
2 The three sonatas are published in the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe, Serie IV, Bd 3, as the so-called ‘Hallenser Sonaten’. They have traditionally been viewed on stylistic grounds as early works, dating from Handel's Halle period, although Best shows that this is impossible in the case of one of the sonatas, since the First two movements of the sonata in E minor, HWV 375, from this collection are arranged from Handel's C minor oboe sonata, HWV 366, which dates from 1711/12. See Best, ‘Handel's Chamber Music’, 484. Best considers the authenticity of the other two sonatas to be ‘very doubtful’.Google Scholar
3 This complaint appeared in French and Italian in the Avertimento to Quantz's Sei sonate a flauto traversiere solo (Dresden, 1734). See Reilly, Edward, Quantz and his Versuch: Three Studies (American Musicological Society, 1971), 150–1. Reilly has suggested that the numbering of the volumes in this comment refers to the two sets of sonatas published by Witvogel in Amsterdam (both published c. 1731–2), of which the first book contains the same pieces as the Sonates italiennes published by Boivin in Paris c. 1729 and the second book the same works as Walsh's Solos for a German Flute a Hoboy or Violin … Compos'd by Sigr. Quants Musician in Ordinary to the King of Poland of 1730. Reilly, Johann Joachim Quantz: On Playing the Flute (2nd edn. New York, 1985), 385–6. For a discussion of Walsh's unauthorized editions in general, see Hunter, David, ‘Music Copyright in Britain to 1800’, Music and Letters, 67 (1986), 269–82 (pp. 272–4).Google Scholar
4 Walsh may also have misunderstood the use of the anagram ‘Melante’, not realizing that it is used by itself as a complete name, without a given name, such as ‘Georgio’ or ‘Georg’ (similar instances occur with names such as ‘Picander’, ‘Menantes“ and ‘Sperontes’). Nor does it appear, outside the Walsh editions, spelt ‘Melande’. But in any case, Walsh added Telemann's proper first name, even in its Italianized form.Google Scholar
5 Ruhnke's dating of Telemann's second edition of these sonatas to c. 1725/6 is tentative. See Ruhnke, Martin, ‘Telemann als Musikverleger’, Musik und Verlag: Karl Vötierte zum 65. Geburtstag (Kassel, 1968), 502–17 (p. 510), and idem, Georg Philipp Telemann: Thematisch systematisches Verzeichnis seiner Werke: Telemann-Werkverzeichnis (TWV), Instrumentalwerke, i (Kassel, 1984) (hereafter TWV). 231.Google Scholar
6 Aside from the ordering of the sonatas, the readings presented in the Walsh edition are no closer to those in the Hamburg edition than they are to the Frankfurt edition of 1715. In the Hamburg edition Telemann revised bass figuring, metres, tempo markings, pitches and articulations. The Walsh edition does not reflect these changes.Google Scholar
7 Ruhnke, TWV, 160, notes that the word ‘Seconda’ is missing from the title-page of the copy preserved in Paris, Collection André Meyer. This shows that Walsh's engravers did not succeed in filling in the opus number on every copy. See also Smith and Humphries, A Bibliography, 227. According to Smith and Humphries, the Solos for a Violin … opera [prima] were advertised in the 19 November 1722 issue of the Daily Courant as having recently appeared.Google Scholar
8 Smith, and Humphries, , A Bibliography, 227. Walsh began adding plate numbers around 1730. See ibid., xv.Google Scholar
9 Burrows, ‘Walsh's Editions’, 81–94. It should be noted that both A and B were responsible for the engraving of spurious works attributed to Quantz. In Walsh's 1730 collection of solos attributed to Quantz, engraver A produced sonatas 2, 3 and 6, while engraver B was responsible for sonatas 1, 4 and 5. If the ‘second book’ in Quantz's avertimento does indeed refer to this collection, then the fourth, fifth and sixth sonatas are spurious. If, on the other hand, Quantz was referring to both that collection (as the ‘first book’) and Walsh's second collection of solos attributed to Quantz, the Solos for a German Flute … Compos'd by Sigr. Quants … opera seconda (1732) (as the ‘second book’), then the same holds true. In the ‘first book’ sonata 3 (engraver A) was listed as spurious, as were sonatas 4–6 in the ‘second book’. In Walsh's second collection, A engraved sonatas 2 and 4 and B engraved sonatas 1, 3, 5 and 6. Thus the pieces engraved by A are neither more nor less likely to be spurious than those engraved by B, even though A was responsible for all four doubtful violin sonatas published in Walsh's two editions of Handel's ‘op. 1‘.Google Scholar
10 The engraving is close to that of engraver A in the ‘Roger’ edition of Handel's op. 1’. The expression marks are produced by different punches in a less ‘cursive’ style, and there are other, more subtle differences as well. The kinds of error present in the editions attributed to ‘Melande’ are of the same type as those Burrows discusses as typical of engraver A. The Handel editions are later, in any case, and the details of the work of both engraver A and engraver B changed over time, as Burrows points out. See Burrows, ‘Walsh's Editions’, 81–6. I am grateful to Donald Burrows for sharing his information regarding the engravers in Walsh's Handel publications.Google Scholar
11 Cf. Burrows's discussion of a passage in the fourth movement of the dubious sonata in F major attributed to Handel, HWV 370 (the final sonata in the collection with the ‘Walsh’ imprint discussed above). This sonata, prepared by engraver A, shows a musical ‘ungrammaticalness’ that may be the result of the same kinds of tampering discussed here with regard to engraver X, and further suggests that engraver X may be identified with engraver A. See Burrows, ‘Walsh's Editions’, 94–5.Google Scholar
12 Hans Graeser is the only scholar before me to cast doubt on the authenticity of the six sonatas in ‘op. 2’. Graeser was unaware of this opus, but listed the XII Solos for a Violin … opera prima (c. 1735), which includes these six sonatas as the second half of the collection (see Table 1). Graeser cited three reasons for doubting the authenticity of these sonatas: (1) The works are not transmitted under Telemann's name in Germany; (2) the first six sonatas of the 1735 set (Walsh's edition of the Six sonates à violon seul of 1715) form a closed set; (3) the tempo indications do not include such characteristic tempo markings as ‘Mesto’, ‘Soave’, etc., which are prevalent in Telemann's works. But, given the existence of the ‘op. 2’ print, Graeser's second and third criteria are not convincing; the ‘op. 2’ sonatas also form a closed set, which were merely reprinted with the ‘op. 1’ pieces, and the tempo markings he cites are not characteristic of Telemann's sonatas at the time of the publication of ‘op. 2’. See Graeser, Hans, ‘Georg Philipp Telemanns Instrumental-Kammermusik’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Munich, 1925), ii, 23. TWV casts no doubt on the authenticity of the works. The works have the TWV numbers (in the order in which they appear in Walsh's edition of ‘op. 2‘) TWV 41: d5, e7, F5, g8, B7, a7.Google Scholar
13 All of the sonata collections and sonatas transmitted in manuscript are treated in Jeanne Swack, ‘The Solo Sonatas of Georg Philipp Telemann: A Study of the Sources and Musical Style’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1988).Google Scholar
14 All the other foreign editions were Parisian, and Telemann, who was in Paris for eight months beginning September 1737, had firsthand knowledge of these publications or was himself involved in their preparation. Telemann discusses the Parisian editions of his works in his third autobiography, written in 1739 and published in Johann Mattheson's Grundlage einer Ehrenpforte (Hamburg, 1740). The passages appear on pp. 366–9. If Telemann had known that his works were being published in as important a musical centre as London, it is likely that he would also have noted them in his autobiography. It is unclear, though, whether Telemann would have been made aware of an English edition under the name ‘Melande’. His informant would have had to recognize that ‘Georgio Melande’ referred to Telemann. Handel and Quantz, both friends of Telemann, might have served as informants in this regard (Quantz could have seen the 1722 and 1725 editions during his 1727 stay in London), but do not seem to have done so. News of the reprint under Telemann's own name may not have reached the composer by the time he prepared the 1739 autobiography.Google Scholar
15 See Swack, Jeanne, Johann Ernst von Sachsen-Weimar als Aufftraggeber: Bemerkungen zum Stil der Six sonates à violon seul (1715) von Georg Philipp Telemann', Telemanns Auftrags- und Gelegenheitswerke – Funktion, Wert und Bedeutung, Konferenzbericht der 10. Telemann-Festtage der DDR (Cologne, forthcoming).Google Scholar
16 For a discussion of Telemann's three surviving solo sonatas in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek and their dating, see Swack, ‘The Solo Sonatas’, 197–219.Google Scholar
17 In the summer of 1990 I had the opportunity to examine all of the Walsh sonata editions in the British Library. No concordances to any of the sonatas in the set were to be found in any other Walsh print. That is, it is unlikely that Walsh resorted to taking pieces from other collections from his own press, even though they may have appeared years earlier.Google Scholar
18 The piece does not descend below the D string (the lowest pitch is d'). Considering the early style and flat key, the oboe is the more likely instrument.Google Scholar
19 Burney, Charles, A General History of Music, iv (London, 1789), modern edition ed. Frank Mercer (New York, 1935), ii, 990.Google Scholar
20 Edwards, Owain, ‘The Response to Corelli's Music in Eighteenth-Century England’, Studia musicologica norvegica, 2 (1976), 51–96 (p. 70).Google Scholar
21 Hawkins, John, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London, 1776; repr. New York, 1963), 678. Cited in Edwards, ‘The Response to Corelli's Music’, 70. According to Edwards, Roger issued collections of Sherard's sonatas as op. 1 in 1701 and op. 2 around 1715.Google Scholar
22 Edwards, ‘The Response to Corelli's Music’, 145 and passim, provides an account of the reception of Corelli's music by these amateur musicians.Google Scholar
23 See Marx, Hans Joachim, Arcangelo Corelli: Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe der musikalischen Werke, Supplementband, Die Überlieferung der Werke Arcangelo Corellis: Catalogue raisonné, ed. Hans Oesch (Cologne, 1980), 272–5; and Karl Heller, Die deutsche Überlieferung der Instrumentalwerke Vivaldis, Beiträge zur musikwissenschaftlichen Forschung in der DDR, 2 (Leipzig, 1971), 166–8. The two sonatas have the numbers Anh. 93 and Anh. 98 in Marx's catalogue. He catalogues both works under the rubric ‘Zweifelhafte Werke’.Google Scholar
24 A comparison of the title-page with those of other manuscripts in the Schwerin collection in which Fick identified himself as the copyist confirms that he is the copyist of the wrapper, but not of the music.Google Scholar
25 Marx, Arcangelo Corelli, 302, maintains incorrectly that there is no attribution on the manuscript, and that the music was First attributed to Corelli in the nineteenth century when it was bound and catalogued. The Berlin manuscript constitutes the surviving third of a much larger manuscript, which had probably included the works of several composers. The pages of the manuscript are numbered 93–148. Pages 1–92 must have been separated from the surviving portion of the manuscript well before it was bound in the nineteenth century, since p. 93 is considerably darker than the remaining pages, indicating that the manuscript had been without a cover for some time. Pages 93–148 contain a closed set of sonatas; the first sonata is labelled ‘Sonata Ima del Signor Corelli’, while the remaining sonatas are merely numbered. At the end of the final sonata is the inscription ‘Finis’, and the verso side of the page has staves ruled but no music entered. Thus the ‘Corelli’ collection was the final set in the manuscript.Google Scholar
26 Sonata no. 9 in the Berlin manuscript is concordant with sonata no. 15 in the Schwerin manuscript (Marx Anh. 101), except that it contains five additional movements which, when separated out, form a plausible succession of movements on their own. The scribe of the Berlin manuscript probably combined the movements from two different sonatas in the same key (B♭ major).Google Scholar
27 Marx provides further information on pieces attributed to Corelli in manuscript, including several English manuscripts, in ‘Some Corelli Attributions Assessed’, Musical Quarterly, 56 (1970), 88–98.Google Scholar
28 See Swack, , ‘The Solo Sonatas’, 250, 265, 293–300.Google Scholar
29 See Marx, , Arcangelo Corelli, 248ff., for lists of sonatas Walsh attributed to Corelli.Google Scholar
30 Occasionally the Schwerin manuscript has an apparent copying error while Walsh has a more plausible reading. For example, in the second movement of the G minor sonata (no. 4 in Walsh, no. 7 in Schwerin), bar 23, beat 1, the Schwerin manuscript has a d“ in the violin part, producing parallel fifths with the bass, while Walsh has a 6b”, undoubtedly the correct reading, and one which makes more melodic sense. The Schwerin copyist was often careless in his notation of rhythm, notating semiquavers, for example, instead of quavers in the bass in some bars.Google Scholar
31 One must bear in mind here that, since we do not have the source from which engraver X worked, some of the apparent errors may have been found in the source he used, and that the text may have thus been subject to a double layer of corruption.Google Scholar
32 There is nothing in the layout of this movement on the engravers' plates to suggest that the movement was shortened for reasons of the page layout (the movement begins in the middle of p. 20 and ends in the middle of p. 21; sonata no. 6 begins in the middle of p. 21).Google Scholar
33 The Schwerin manuscript presents an identical reading of this passage. Thus engraver X was not responsible for the solecism.Google Scholar
34 Telemann ended one non-recitative movement in his XII solos à violon ou traversière of 1734 (the third movement of the fourth sonata) in a different key from that in which it began. But in that movement Telemann was experimenting with an unusual key relationship. Further, that movement is solidly in the tonic D minor until the closing section.Google Scholar
35 The overall key of the sonata is A minor. The harmonic plan of this movement also seems to have confused engraver X. Despite the E minor opening of this movement, the engraver employed the key signature for A minor. It should be noted, however, that Burrows's engraver A was not above engraving inner movements with the wrong key signature. In Handel's ‘op. 1’, for example, he engraved the third movement of the ninth sonata (Sonata in B minor for Transverse Flute and Basso Continuo, HWV 367b) with two sharps, even though the movement is in G major, and then dutifully cancelled the C# s individually with natural signs.Google Scholar
36 No Telemann sonatas survive in manuscript in England. In 1746 the Walsh firm published an edition of Telemann's Sonates sans basse, à deux flutes traverses (Hamburg, 1727). There had, however, already been reprints by Le Cène (c.1730) and Le Clerc (after 1736). See Ruhnke, TWV, i, 118.Google Scholar