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Ferdinand David as editor - Clive Brown

Ferdinand David’s residence in Leipzig between 1836 and his death in 1873 was a crucial factor in hisbecoming the most prolific and influential editor of music in the mid-19th century. Leipzig was alreadythe centre of German music printing when David took up his duties there and as a result of Mendelssohn’sreputation and achievements it quickly became one of most prestigious musical centres in Europe (out ofall proportion to its importance as a town). David’s effectiveness as leader of the Gewandhaus Orchestrawas soon acknowledged; his position as head of the violin department at the Conservatorium that wasfounded at Mendelssohn’s instigation in 1843 gave him a prominent position as a pedagogue. His editingactivities began in the year the Conservatorium was founded with his edition of Bach’s solo Sonatas andPartitas, which was already linked to his work there by the statement on its title page ‘Zum Gebrauch beidem Conservatorium der Musik zu Leipzig mit Fingersatz, Bogenstrichen und sonstigen Bezeichnungenversehen’ (for use at the Leipzig Conservatorim for Music, supplied with fingering, bowing and othermarkings). For a while this edition remained an exception in David’s output. During the rest of the 1840she continued to publish his own compositions as well as making violin arrangements of cello sonatas byMendelssohn, Moscheles and Chopin, but from the early 1850s he began to focus increasingly onproducing annotated editions of Baroque, Classical and contemporary works, developing an approach tothis task that was to provide a valuable record of his own practice (within limitations that are discussedbelow) as well exerting long-term influence on the concept of the annotated edition.

After demonstrating his exceptional musical abilities as a child, the 13-year-old David was sent to Kasselwhere he spent the years 1823 to 1825 studying violin with Spohr and theory with Mortiz Hauptmann.Spohr’s tuition encompassed not only solo violin technique but also chamber and orchestral practice; heencouraged his students to take part in chamber music and made them play as members of the theatreorchestra, which he conducted. It seems probable that many of David's stylistic precepts were forged atthat time, for Spohr had very decided views about the style of playing that was appropriate to particularrepertoires and instilled these into his students. Spohr had been recognised by Friedrich Rochlitz as earlyas 1805, in a review of his performances in Leipzig at that time, for his sensitivity in giving eachcomposer's works a distinctive character appropriate to the music. Rochlitz considered that one of the

things that made Spohr a great artist was ‘his insight into the spirit of the most different compositions, andhis skill in reproducing each in that spirit’ (seine Einsicht in den Geist der verschiedenstenKompositionen, und sein Kunst, jede in diesem ihrem Geiste darzustellen). Furthermore, Rochlitzenthused:

He is almost a different person when he performs, for example, Beethoven (his darling,whom he handles splendidly), or Mozart (his ideal), or Rode (whose grandiosity he knows sowell how to assume without, like him, occasionally letting himself verge on scratching andscraping, particularly in producing a big sound), or when he plays Viotti and gallantcomposers; he is a different person, because they are different people. (Er ist fast ganz einAnderer, wenn er z. B. Beethoven, (seinen Liebling, den er trefflich behandelt,) oder Mozart,(sein Ideal,) oder Rode, (dessen Grandiose er sehr gut anzunehmen weiss, ohne mit ihm andas Scharfe und Schneidende zu streifen, und ihm nur Weniges, besonders in Dicke des Tons,zuvorlassend,) oder wenn er Viotti und galante Komponisten, vorträgt; er ist ein Anderer wiesie Andere sind.)

[Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 7(1804-5), cols 202-3]

Spohr’s seriousness of purpose clearly had a decisive impact on David’s future career, and when he leftKassel at the age of 15 he seems already to have been a rounded artist with a well-developed techniquecapable of tackling his master’s most difficult works. During the years 1825 and 1826 he and his pianistsister Louise (later, as Louise Dulcken, to become one of the most successful pianists in London) made aseries of concert tours to Copenhagen and a number of important north German cities. At the LeipzigGewandhaus in December 1825, David played Spohr’s 'Gesangsscene' Violin Concerto (of which he waslater to make an edition) and Potpourri on Irish songs, while his sister performed works by Moscheles.During this concert tour David first encountered Felix Mendelssohn and laid the foundations of thefriendship that was later to have such a profound influence. Their friendship deepened after David movedto Berlin to take up a position in the orchestra of the Königstadt Theater and became a regular participantin chamber music at the Mendelssohn house, especially playing quartets with Mendelssohn (viola) and thebrothers Edouard and Julius Rietz (violin and cello). For six years (1829-1835), David occupied anunusual post as leader of a private quartet for Carl von Liphart at Dorpat (now Tartu) in Estonia, where hehad an exceptional opportunity to familiarise himself with the whole repertoire of string quartets that wereperformed at that time.

Although the basis of David’s violin playing was formed predominantly through his study with Spohr, hewas also alert to the new and different approaches to violin technique that he encountered in later life. Ashis 1863 Violinschule demonstrates, aspects of these were incorporated into his own playing tosupplement the techniques he had imbibed from Spohr’s teaching. In March and April 1829, shortlybefore he moved to Dorpat, he had the opportunity to hear Paganini in Berlin and may even have met theItalian virtuoso when he dined with the Mendelssohn family on 19 March 1829. According to David’spupil August Wilhelmj, the experience of hearing Paganini was a revelation, which, although causing amomentary crisis of confidence, was to be a productive influence on his development. While in Dorpat,David was able to make occasional concert tours to St Petersburg and other nearby musical centres, andalthough during his years in Leipzig his only major concert tours were to London in 1839 and 1841, hehad excellent opportunities to hear and associate with the many celebrated European violinists whoincluded Leipzig in their touring itinerary. As a player and teacher, therefore, he absorbed theseexperiences and allowed them to mould his own playing style and pedagogy. According to an accountwritten shortly after his death:

After hearing [Paganini] for the first time, he actually - according to Wilhelmj - wanted togive up violin playing entirely. But luckily for art he did not carry out this intention; for hiswork was, in fact, epoch-making for the history of violin playing, because, while cultivatingthe broad, so-called German playing style of Spohr, he sought to unify and amalgamate itwith the acquirements of Paganini and the Franco-Belgian School. Thus he became the

reformer, indeed according to Wilhelmj, the “Father of the modern German school of violinplaying”. (Nachdem er den Erstgenanten [Paganini] zum ersten Male gehört, zwar hatte er -so erzählt Wilhelmj - das Violinspiel ganz aufgeben wollen. Doch ward er zum Heile derKunst dieser Entschluss nicht zur That; denn geradezu epochmachend wurde sein Wirken fürdie Geschichte des Violinspiels dadurch, dass er das breite, sogennante deutsche Spiel Spohr'sweiter ausbildend, die Errungenschaften eines Paganini und der französisch-belgischenSchule mit dem classischen alten Geigenspiele in Einklang zu bringen und eineVerschmelzung derselben anzubahnen suchte. Solchergestalt ward er zum Reformator, ja, wieWilhelmj ihn bezeichnet, zum “Vater der modernen deutschen Geigerschule.)

[La Mara, Musikalische Studienköpfe. Vol. 3 Jüngstvergangenheit und Gegenwart. (Leipzig:Heinrich Schmidt und Carl Günther, 1878), p. 61]

It seems likely that David’s early training with Spohr (who included bowing instructions and detailedfingering in the published editions of his own music) may have encouraged his habit of marking detailedbowing and fingering into the copies from which he performed. He certainly adopted it at an early stage.In a letter to Mendelssohn in 1844 he commented:

It is a joy to hear young Weissenborn play quartets; he plays from Grabau’s copies, which Iprecisely marked up in my first winter here [1836] and he imitates every little quirk of minewith hair’s-breadth precision. (Weissenbornchen spielt Quartett, dass es eine Freude ist; erspielt aus den Grabauschen Büchern, die ich im ersten Winter hier genau bezeichnet habe,und macht mir jedes kleine Mätzchen genau aufs Haar nach.)

[Julius Eckardt, Ferdinand David und die Familie Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (Leipzig: Dunckerand Humblot, 1888), p. 204.]

The nature and level of detail of David’s markings is graphically illustrated by his surviving personalcopies. Most of these cannot be dated with precision, but in a couple of instances we can be fairly certainwhen they were annotated. This is the case with two Volkmann string quartets (opp. 9 and 14) in theUppingham Collection, on the covers of which David has noted the date of first performance at theGewandhaus quartet concerts during the 1850s (these dates are confirmed by the programmes of theconcerts, listed in Claudius Böhm Das Gewandhaus-Quartett und die Kammermusik am LeipzigerGewandhaus seit 1808 (Altenburg: Klaus-Jürgen Kamprad, 2008)).

Perhaps the earliest known surviving example is his personal copy of Viotti’s Six Duets op. 1, which isbound into a volume of duets by Viotti, H. Ries, Hauptmann and Spohr in the Uppingham collection (seemy note in the red box on the first page of music). With our present knowledge of David’s orthography itis impossible to be completely certain that the detailed markings throughout these duets are by David, butit seems extremely likely. Markings in his mature hand occur on the first three staves of the first violinpart of the first duet, apparently emphasising and revising the original markings, but these are absentthereafter. The extremely neat and comprehensive markings that follow (including some realizations ofornaments) are, if by David, clearly from a much earlier date, They exhibit similarities to the mature hand,for instance his for (forte) and p (piano), but the formation of the fingering numbers show some quitedifferent forms. The 1, which he later mostly wrote as a simple, slightly forward-slanting stroke, has a ^on top of it, and the bottom stroke of the 2, which later is generally straight, tends to curl upwards.Furthermore, the down-bow sign, which he wrote in the modern manner in his mature hand, is writtenupside down (see examples). The most persuasive argument for David’s authorship of these earlymarkings, however, is their highly detailed nature, which is so typical of his later approach and so veryuncommon in other surviving sources from this period.

Although David's 1843 edition of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin marked the beginning of hisseminal career as an editor of other people’s music, it is, in some respects, untypical of his later editorialwork. In the first place, it includes what was believed to be Bach’s original text on a smaller stave belowthe editor’s performing version. A note on the title page states: 'For those who want to mark up this work

themselves, the original text, which is taken with the greatest exactitude from the composer's originalmanuscript, is added in small notes'. This 'original manuscript' cannot, however, have been Bach'sautograph; it was either a copy by Anna Magdalena Bach, or one by an unknown copyist, both of whichwere obtained by the Royal Library in Berlin in 1841 from the estate of the Hamburg music teacher andBach collector Pölchau. At that time and for many years afterwards they were both believed to beautograph. The autograph itself was only recognised towards the end of the nineteenth century and wasstill in private hands when it was used as the basis for the 1908 edition by Joseph Joachim and AndreasMoser. It is possible that the decision to include the composer’s text unaltered below the edited versionwas influenced by Mendelssohn, who had become increasingly strict in his attitude towards editing andadapting Baroque music for contemporary use. When Mendelssohn came to edit Handel’s Israel inEgypt for the London Handel Society in 1844-5, he adopted a much more purist approach than had beenobserved in the Society’s other editions, observing in his preface

I think it of paramount importance that all my remarks should be kept strictly separate fromthe Original Score, and that the latter should be given in its entire purity, in order to affordevery one an opportunity of resorting to Handel himself, and not to obtrude any suggestionsof mine upon those who may differ from me in opinion.

Mendelssohn did, however, provide an editorial organ part ‘written down in the manner in which I wouldplay it if called upon to do so at a performance of this Oratorio.’ (See Brown, A Portrait of Mendelssohn,pp. 40-46.)

Furthermore, David’s edition of Bach’s solo Sonatas and Partitas, like the much later Baroque collectionin his Hohe Schule des Violinspiels, provides rather more detailed instructions for the execution of themusic than he was to include in editions of the Viennese Classics that were part of the standard repertoireof his own day. He appears to have considered that pre-Classical music, with no continuous performingtradition, demanded a greater level of guidance for the player and that, in particular, it required a differentapproach to bowing. Responding to Baroque music intuitively, therefore, David may have beenattempting to forge a distinct style in which he believed this music could be made more accessible andacceptable to contemporary musicians and audiences. He thus suggested a varied range of expressivenuances and bowstrokes that were not typically employed in Classical works at that time and were notindicated in his editorial or manuscript markings in works of the Classical masters (see the article 'Violinbowing'), specifying them by means of instructions such as leggieramente, staccato, and largamente inthe fugue of the First Sonata; Staccato du milieu de l’archet in the Double to the Gavotte of the FirstPartita; saltato in the Chaconne; and talon in the Allegro assai of the Third Sonata. In one of the passagesin the Chaconne, marked simply arpeggio by Bach, however, David altered Bach’s slurring pattern to onethat reflected post-Viotti practice, and also indicated the kind of springing arpeggios that were later toappear in Mendelssohn’s through-composed cadenza for his Violin Concerto op. 64. Here he was perhapsinfluenced directly by David's realisation of these arpeggios in the Chaconne, which the two friends hadplayed together on several occasions. David’s fingering in the Sonatas and Partitas, which includesportamento effects, together with the frequent use of open strings and harmonics is, on the other hand,very similar to that employed by him for Classical repertoire.

The influence of David’s edition of Bach’s solo violin pieces was extensive and long lasting. BernhardMolique’s editions of selected movements with piano accompaniment, published in 1853, also by Kistner,corresponds almost exactly with David’s in respect of bowing and fingering; it seems that Molique’s rolewas to supply a piano part rather than to revise the violin part (this is implied by the wording of the titlepage in the English edition). Hellmesberger’s edition of all six (Peters, c. 1865) also owes much toDavid’s example. Despite Joachim’s highly critical attitude towards David’s editing, his own edition ofthe Sonatas and Partitas, prepared in collaboration with Andreas Moser and published by Bote & Bock in1908, the year after his death, retains many of the distinctive characteristics of David’s. (See Clive Brown,‘Joseph Joachim as editor') This undoubtedly reflects the fact that he had first learned the pieces underDavid’s tutelage in the early 1840s and that his early performances, at least, will have been from David’sedition, often in those years with Mendelssohn’s piano accompaniment to the Chaconne. (The French

edition of Mendelssohn’s piano accompaniment to the Chaconne (1848) included the following commenton the title page ‘executée à Paris dans plusieurs concerts, / PAR / JOACHIM / Member du Conservatoirede Leipsic’. (See John Michael Cooper, ‘Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Ferdinand David und JohannSebastian Bach: Mendelssohns Bach-Auffassung im Spiegel der Wiederentdeckung der “Chaconne”’,Mendelssohn Studien, vol. 10 (Berlin, 1997), pp. 157-179); for more detailed comparison of editions ofthe Bach Solo Sonatas and Partitas see Duncan Druce’s article on this website.

As indicated earlier, David’s letters show that he had adopted the practice of marking up his ownperforming material in detail from an early stage. It seems, nevertheless, that he (or perhaps the publisher)was only gradually persuaded to include this kind of detailed annotation in the new editions of classicalchamber music (replacing earlier editions with more up to date and reliable ones) that began to be issuedin greater numbers from the 1850s. At first David did not supply the chamber music editions for which hewas the named editor with fingering or bow direction signs, despite the claim ‘Neue Ausgabe zumGebrauch beim Conservatorium der Musik zu Leipzig genau bezeichnet von Ferdinand David’ (Newedition for use at the Leipzig Conservatorium precisely marked by Ferdinand David) on the title page ofthe Breitkopf und Härtel editions of Mozart string quartets (pl. nos. 9293-9302), published as individualworks from 1857. It was evidently decided at a fairly late stage in the project, however, that bowing andfingering should be included, for while the first seven quartets have no fingerings or up- and down-bowsigns (see for example No. 7, K. 499, pl. no. 9299), the last three (in the order K. 589. K. 590, K. 575, pl.nos. 9300-9302) contain editorial fingering and bowing (for example No. 8, K. 589).

This established the practice he was to maintain in his subsequent editions of Classical chamber music. Ina reissue of the Mozart String Quartets as a single volume collection with the new plate number 13168,published around the time of David’s death (1873), he also supplied bowing and fingering for the firstseven quartets. In Bach's A minor Violin Concerto, published in 1864, he included fingerings, bowings,and articulations markings (including staccato dots and horizontal tenuto lines). David’s personal copy ofthis edition (from the Uppingham collection) also contains additional pencil markings , but these almostcertainly stem from his son Paul. Other editions from the early 1860s included five Spohr violin concertos(with David's editorial markings added to the plates of the original editions), Rode's Air Varié op.10 (listed in Hofmeister, Jan. 1863), and Tartini's L’arte del arco as Die Kunst der Bogenführung (inHofmeister, Jan. 1864). At the end of the Violinschule (Hofmeister Dec. 1863) David appended a list ofpublications ‘which the author principally uses for teaching advanced pupils’ (p. 72) that included all thepedagogic editions he had published up to that time. Under studies, specifying publishers, he included hisown editions of Kreutzer, Fiorillo, Rode, Paganini and Tartini, together with the Bach solo violin piecesand his own op. 8 and op. 20 Capricen and op. 39 Dur und Moll studies. Under Concertos and ConcertPieces he included the Viotti, Rode and Kreutzer concertos issued as Conzert-Studien and Rode’s op. 10variations, both published by Senff. Spohr’s Violin Concertos 2, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11, and Lipinski’s ConcertoMilitaire op. 21 were also specified, but surprisingly without mention of the publisher, although David’seditions of all of these concertos had already appeared or were just about to appear in print. HisViolinkonzerte neuere Meister, collecting together the concertos of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Lipinski(op. 21), and Ernst (op. 23) was first listed in Hofmeister in January 1865.

During these years Ferdinand David was editing the core Classical chamber music and concerto repertoireat an almost incredible pace. The rapidity with which his editions appeared during the last decade of hislife would scarcely have been possible without his long-established practice of adding detailedperformance marking in all the music he performed. In the course of his activities as a quartet player inDorpat and regular chamber music player in Leipzig for more than thirty years, this must have includedalmost every major chamber work in the repertoire of his day. When he came to the task of preparingcopy for his publishers, therefore, he will already have done much of the preparatory work onperformance markings. The process of editing, however, must often have involved considerable work onsource materials. Though none of David’s editions can be considered scholarly in the sense of modernUrtexts he undoubtedly took considerable trouble to establish as reliable a text as possible. In the case ofBeethoven’s Violin Concerto, it seems that David was responsible for the edition in the Breitkopf undHärtel Gesamtausgabe (1864?), for which he must (directly or indirectly) have consulted Beethoven’s

autograph, although he did not have access to the Stichvorlage that was in private possession in Englandat that time. The Gesamtausgabe was the first edition to reinstate the independent cello part at bars 525-533 of the first movement (which, though present in the autograph, was partially omitted in theStichvorlage and completely absent from the first edition), and the additional bar following bar 216 in theRondo, which was absent in both those sources. David’s practical edition of the Beethoven ViolinConcerto, which was included in his Violinconcerte neuerer Meister in 1865, reflects the text of theGesamtausgabe in these respects, but includes extensive changes to the bowing and phrasing, as well ascomprehensive fingerings, which reflect David’s style of performing the work. In this case we alsopossess his earlier personal performance copy of the concerto (a reprint of the first edition from about1828 containing very extensive bowing and fingering added by David in orange crayon), with which themarkings in the Violinconcerte neuerer Meister edition closely, though not exactly correspond. David’spersonal performing copy of the concerto also indicates graphically some of the probable differencesbetween what he included in his editions and what, in practice, he may have performed, for it includesadditional ornaments, dynamics, and an ossia absent from the 1865 edition.

Among the other works in the Violinconcerte neuere Meister the edition of Mendelssohn’s ViolinConcerto is of particular interest. Some twenty years earlier, when Mendelssohn was in the final stages ofcomposing the concerto, he and David had exchanged detailed letters about figurations, articulation andother markings. Evidence of David’s conscientiousness in respect of bowing and fingering can be seen inhis collaboration with Mendelssohn over the publication of the E minor Violin Concerto. On 2 January1845, he commented in a letter to the composer:

I have also revised it [the solo part], deleting many superfluous fingerings and bowings that Ihad written in and adding many new ones. Just strike out everything that’s superfluous. Iknow from my own experience and with Beethoven and Bach, that it is not good to send fortha violin piece into the uncultivated world of violinists without all the bowings and fingerings.They don’t take the trouble to discover the right ones and would rather say that it isungrateful and unplayable in places. Therefore put up with anything that your composer’sconscience can tolerate. [Eckardt, Ferdinand David, p. 229]

The original edition contains a modest amount of fingering, but David added many additional markings inhis new edition of 1865, providing a full set of instructions for all bow changes and fingerings, as he didfor the other concertos in the neuere Meister collection. David’s other editions from the late 1860s containa mixture of standard chamber and solo repertoire with arrangements. The chamber works includedMozart’s Violin Sonatas and Duos for Violin and Viola, Beethoven’s complete String Quartets, PianoTrios, Violin Sonatas and other pieces for violin and piano, fifteen of Haydn’s string quartets, as well asSchubert’s Rondeau Brillant op. 70, String Quartet in D minor (Senff), and a two-volume collection of hisother quartets for Peters. Solo repertoire included Mozart’s Violin Concerto K. 218 and the Divertimentoin D. Alongside this David also made arrangements of cello pieces for violin (notably the Bach soloSuites and the Beethoven Sonatas), an edition of Bach’s Third Orchestral Suite for violin and piano (basedon the edition he and Mendelssohn had produced in connection with a Gewandhaus performance in 1839),Mendelssohn Lieder ohne Worte for violin and piano, and a series of heavily edited Baroque pieces thatwere first published separately and then collectively as the Hohe Schule des Violinspiels. In the fewremaining years of his life, David’s editorial activity continued unabated, with editions of Schubert’sPiano Trios and Violin Sonatas (Sonatinas and Duo), Chopin’s Piano Trio, Weber’s Violin Sonatas, Raff’sViolin Sonatas opp. 73 and 78, Bach’s Violin Concerto in E major and Double Violin Concerto, as well asreconstructions of two Bach harpsichord concertos for violin, published as Violin Concertos numbers 3 in D minor and 4 in G minor, several more works by Paganini, and violin duets by Spohr, Viotti, and Pleyel.

In his later editions of chamber music, David generally provided much more extensive performanceinformation, of the kind he had previously supplied only in study works before the last three Mozartquartet editions. Whatever inhibition he may earlier have felt about imposing his own musicalconceptions on the works of Classical and contemporary composers seems to have dissipated. Thus there

are a greater number of expressive fingerings and more nuanced bowing, employing the tenuto line aswell as the staccato mark. There are, nevertheless, distinctions between the chamber music of the greatmasters and their concertos, the former showing more fidelity to the original text than the latter. It seemsclear that this is not merely arbitrary; David will have been well aware that when Beethoven wrote astring quartet or a violin sonata he took care to provide the bowing and articulation in much greater detailthan he did in a concerto (where the composer acknowledged the role of soloists in finding the best way tomarry their techniques with the expressive requirements of the music). Thus, while the Gesamtausgabeedition faithfully reproduces Beethoven's text (as it was understood at the time) David's Violinconcerteneuerer Meister edition of the Beethoven Violin Concerto contains vastly more editorial bowing (wherethe composer left the notes unslurred) than his editions of the chamber works.

David's editions of chamber music were not, however, free from arbitrary editorial intervention. Thus inBeethoven's Kreutzer Sonata he altered the notes of a passage in the first movement for the sake of whathe evidently considered to be a more effective version (see the annotation on stave 7); the alterationwas amended in Joachim's later Peters edition. In some cases, discrepancies in the text between David'sand later editions were not so much the result of editorial caprice as of the unavailability of a reliable text.In many cases it is unclear upon what David based his texts of works that had not yet been included in aGesamtausgabe. Thus his Mozart Duos for Violin and Viola differ greatly from the text of the later criticaledition based on Mozart's autograph (although there are, in fact, grounds for thinking that the earlyeditions contain amendments by the composer that post-dated the autograph). The Mozart Duos alsoprovide a particularly good illustration of David's constant search for the optimum mode of expression,for his personal copy of these pieces reveals him making extensive changes to his own printed annotationsin the violin part of both Duos and in the viola part of K. 424, which he evidently performed in public.

Even in the case of works that he had performed for decades, sometimes from memory, David's deepcommitment to finding the most appropriate mode of expression led him constantly to revisit and modifyearlier ideas. This is strikingly apparent in his manuscript annotations in a copy of his edition ofBeethoven's Violin Sonatas from the Uppingham collection. The only work in the volume that containshis hand-written markings is the 'Kreutzer' sonata, of which he and Mendelssohn had given acclaimedperformances, playing from memory. In view of the fact that he had long ago committed the piece tomemory, it is perhaps unsurprising that his changes to the printed markings are fewer than in many otherworks. They are nevertheless quite significant, involving changes of bowing , fingering , dynamics andeven notes in his characteristic blue crayon.

More surprising, perhaps, are his modifications in chamber works by Mendelssohn, though these occuronly in performing copies of works of which he did not make published editions (the String Quintetop.18 and the String Quartets opp. 12, 13 and 44 nos 1-3); his copy of the String Quintet also containscuts to the slow movement in the composer's hand (in red crayon), but David made additional cuts in bluecrayon, for which there is no evidence of sanction by the composer. In other contemporary works,performed but not edited for publication, he could be remarkably free by modern standards, recomposingpassages that he considered ineffective in their original form, or making cuts. This is apparent in thecopies of string quartets by Cherubini and Volkmann from which he performed at the LeipzigGewandhaus (the title pages of the Volkmann copies have a note in David's hand giving the date ofperformance). A copy of Beethoven's G major Romance, probably acquired by him in about 1860, offersanother instance of David working out his approach to performing a work. It was evidently annotated firstin pencil and then, after a process of modification, marked up in ink. A series of changes leading to a quitedifferent final version can be seen particularly clearly on stave nine of the first page; on stave two ofthe second page he marked vibrato with wavy lines, first in pencil and then in ink (though he did not inkover all occurrences of the sign, probably through oversight). Without the survival of these and otherexamples of heavily marked performance material it would have been impossible to demonstrate thatDavid's published editions, despite their highly informative markings, provide only a partial impression ofhow he interpreted or modified the composer's notation.

David's personal copy of one of his major projects during his last years, the Hohe Schule des Violinspiels,

a collection of twenty pieces, primarily of Baroque works, provides particularly rich evidence of hisrestless mind, always seeking new and more effective ways of presenting the music. It is especiallyinteresting because of the clear evidence that his modifications to the text and to his own printed markingsoccurred very soon after the editions were published and evidently in connection with performances.Sometimes he changes bowing, annotates the music with information about particular styles of bowstroke,clarifies or amends articulation, indicates vibrato, and amplifies dynamics, as on page four of Biber'sPassacaglia, or, on page six , adds tempo and expression markings, or even occasionally instructions forportamento, here with the term rutschen (slide). In many cases he alters fingering, often to enable moreexpressive use of portamento, as on page three of a sonata supposedly by Geminiani, where he alsochanges the tempo term at the beginning. The importance of a highly nuanced and expressive use ofportamento in David's playing is clearly demonstrated by his fingering, taken in conjunction with the verydetailed illustration of the execution of portamento during shifting in his Violinschule.

Taken all in all, Ferdinand David's activities as an editor and annotator of music offer some of the clearestevidence of a mid 19th-century violinist's performing practice that is available to us. The richness of hislegacy, even though available surviving copies annotated in his own hand represent a very small portionof the collection that must once have existed, offers an unparalleled insight into the mind of one of themost important and influential performers and teachers of the period. Much of the editorial practice thatfollowed was indebted to him either as a model, or as a springboard for further development.

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