The present research arose from the need to understand the origin of the problems posed by the editing of the set of songs with Spanish text composed by the French-Andalusian singer and composer Pauline Viardot-García (1821-1910). ¹ This editing was carried out in accordance with the critical editorial principles that are generally adopted by musical philology and musicological science. Broadly speaking, the critical editorial method seeks to settle on a text that in some way represents the work —whatever this term refers to— in a written medium. It is based on primary musical sources, that is, on other texts in musical notation that are seen as testimonies that have guaranteed the historical survival of the work or, at least, have served as vehicles for its documentary transmission through time and space. Musical sources can provide information on the structure of the work, its elements, and the way in which they are articulated. Subsequently, the text set by the editor serves as a basis for specialists and performers to study and accurately (re-)create the composition as a musical event.

This notion of music editing, which has long been hegemonic in the academic and professional worlds, constitutes both a frame of reference and a starting point for this study. On the one hand, it acts as a frame of reference insofar as it participates in and is an expression of an ideology that has been developing at least since the end of the eighteenth century, and in which the concepts of the musical work and musical text are prominent. Taking the work and text as axioms, artistic-social structures and an aesthetic were consolidated, and these have largely characterized Western musical culture in the modern period. The study of the concept of the musical work, of the function of the musical text, and of Pauline Viardot’s performance practice through the process followed in the editing of her Spanish songs, cannot be isolated from this context. On the contrary, one must compare Viardot’s ideas with this framework as an explanatory procedure.

On the other hand, musical editing as described is a starting point because the reflections on the critical editorial method and the consequences of its application in the case of Viardot’s Spanish songs have led to the approach and the methodological basis on which this study is based. During the editorial process, the musical texts contained in the primary musical sources are subjected to an exhaustive examination at different levels: ecdotic, exegetic, and stylistic. ² Since the sources are seen as documentary copies of the work, the study of these sources in practice involves continually questioning not only the work itself represented in the source but also the concept of the work of the creator of that source (composer, arranger, copyist, printer, et cetera). Thus, traditional philology, understood as textual criticism, opens the way to a kind of ontology of the musical work in a given cultural and historical framework. If we accept, moreover, that ideas about the existence of the musical work in given circumstances are products of certain codes of thought, cultural principles and social systems, this ontological-historical approach to the work paves, in turn, the way for philology in a broader sense —that is, a discipline that deals with the study of culture through texts. In short, the editorial process is conceived as a research tool with which to draw conclusions of an ontological and cultural nature, and is akin to a philology that seeks humanistic knowledge in and from the text. In the case of the present study, these conclusions derive from the analysis of the problems presented by the autographs, manuscript copies, and first printed editions of Viardot’s Spanish songs as sources for establishing a musical text according to the conventional editing practices mentioned above.

Starting from a questioning of the idea of the work-concept as the central paradigm of the musical phenomenon in the West, and favouring the perspective of music as a process and activity, Performance Practice Studies has developed a useful conceptual repertoire and set of methodological tools with which to study the meanings that performance practice possesses and represents, as well as the interrelationships between the different actors who participate in the musical event in their social and cultural contexts. ³ An approach to the issues raised by Viardot’s set of Spanish songs from the perspective of Performance Practice Studies could prove useful. In fact, some points of this study adopt this perspective or, at least, are influenced by it. However, the philological approach proposed does not in any way exclude questioning the more «orthodox» or traditional concept of the musical work. Precisely, as we shall see, the results of the critical analysis of musical sources (musical texts) will lead to the need for this questioning in Viardot. In this case, replacing the «work-concept» paradigm in the strict sense with that of «process» and even the reductionist opposition «product» vs. «process» could be equally imprecise or inadequate. Instead, as I will attempt to show, Viardot’s concept of «work» —again, whatever this term refers to— belongs to a complex and dynamic space of practices in which both extremes («product», «process») interact and negotiate, with the implications that this idea would have in historiographical terms and for current performance practice. It is significant that Nicholas Cook uses these terms in the title of his paper («Between Process and Product»), not as opposites but as juxtaposed, suggesting, moreover, a space of intersection between them, of «relationship […] that defines the “performance” in the Western “art” tradition». The use of the term «product» instead of «work» is also significant, as it frees the latter from its more reductionist conception as the composer’s “product” and opens it up to a much broader, richer and more complex idea. In this paper, Cook not only overturns the «idol» of the «work» as a product, but also draws attention to the problem of «fetishizing» the performance. ⁴ In line with Cook’s understanding of Performance Practice Studies, this study —which starts from the score— leads us to go «beyond the score», to borrow part of the title of another publication by this author. ⁵ Therefore, in that same space, the textual and oral-improvisatorial dimensions would settle their relations, as well as all the phenomena that the combination of both would give rise to. After all, Performance Practices Studies, which analyse and interpret music within sociocultural structures, and philology, which studies culture as text to be «read» (interpreted) —and in which musical texts are just one of many textual manifestations— converge in the same interests and objectives. ⁶ In any case, although the philological perspective is the most appropriate according to the starting point and approach of this study, what is significant from an epistemological point of view is probably that the phenomenon represented by the Viardot case leads us to invoke as useful (and complementary) these different approaches.

Essentialist or abstract philosophical disquisitions on the being of music or of the musical work are not particularly interesting or practical in relation to the objectives set out in this study. What is important, however, is how the work and its existence are conceived in a specific historical framework such as the modern period. The consideration of this temporal boundary, which extends far beyond Viardot’s lifetime, is based on the premise that the hegemonic conceptions of the work and musical culture that were consolidated around the beginning of the nineteenth century were projected far beyond Viardot’s death and remained, and remain to a large extent, in force throughout the twentieth century, conditioning the understanding of music, performance practices and music editing in the West to this day. Therefore, the notion of ontology that I adopt in this study and is useful for our purposes is that of historical ontology. ⁷

On this theoretical basis, therefore, the main aim of this study is to explore the concept of the musical work and the function of the musical text in Pauline Viardot-García’s thought, as well as her performance practices as a crystallization of this thought. ⁸ I shall also attempt to evaluate to what extent categories canonized in written musical culture since the nineteenth century, such as authorship, authority, authenticity, closed work, definitive text, and so on, fit into Viardot’s artistic vision and practice. And finally, I shall briefly set out, as a possible future research line, the idea that Hispanic popular and theatre culture, an intimate part of her domestic environment, had a decisive influence on her ideas about musical work and praxis.

To begin my argument, I will outline the main themes of the predominant tradition of thought in Europe from the beginning of the nineteenth century on the concept of the musical work and the function of the musical text, looking at some of the most relevant contributions of the musicological literature. I will then present a sample of the analysis of the musical texts of Viardot’s Spanish songs carried out with the aim of shedding light on her concept of work and performance practice. Third, I will link Viardot’s ideas and practices to the cultural framework centred on and governed by the concept of the work-object and attempt to place them in that context. In this attempt to situate Viardot within this framework, the contributions of Lydia Goehr and Leo Treitler have proved invaluable. Lastly, I shall propose some hypotheses about the possible peripheral origins of this line of thought shared by other composers of Viardot’s time.

The concept of an autonomous musical work, that is, an entity with a recognizable identity, clearly defined boundaries, and intrinsic value independent of any other element, circumstance or activity external to it, originally concerns music’s aspiration to acquire the same aesthetic and artistic status achieved by the fine arts in Western culture. In 1835, Franz Liszt went so far as to call for «the foundation of a new [musical] museum», to come into effect through the «solemn» month-long performance of the best religious, dramatic, and symphonic works in the Louvre and their subsequent acquisition and publication by the government. ⁹ The idea of the «musical museum» or «museum of musical works» as a metaphor for the European repertoire and musical heritage made up of artistic «pieces» has subsequently enjoyed significant success in theoretical reflections on musical works. ¹⁰ Like fine art museums, the «museum of musical works» is a space —«imaginary», according to André Malraux— to which works incorporated into the canon belong and which are performed —exhibited— in abstraction from their original contexts and conditions of creation and performance in order to create an aesthetic experience as beautiful art.

The conceptual shift in understanding music as a «work» rather than as an activity or process required reducing it to an object. It is precisely on this idea that one of Patricia Carpenter’s central theses in «The Musical Object» is based. According to Carpenter, the musical object is a structure in which the parts are related to each other and to the whole, and, at the same time, an organic unity whose manipulation, or the subtraction of any of its members, would entail its deformation. In this sense, Lydia Goehr later emphasized the untouchable nature of the work, to which any alteration would cause irreparable damage. ¹¹ Individualized, separate and isolated from surrounding activity, the musical work is independent of its own creator to the point of being able to exist apart from them and to perpetuate itself beyond their death. The contemplation of the work as a differentiated entity also requires that it be distant from the subject, so that the subject may perceive it objectively and with perspective. The difficulty of reconciling the temporal —dynamic— nature of music and the static condition of the object in the concept of the musical work is resolved by Carpenter by resorting to Husserl’s phenomenology and Gestalt theory. The musical work is a totality made up of moments that follow one another and that form an objective temporal unity. The perception of this totality in time involves the perception of the non-simultaneous as simultaneous and, ultimately, the contemplation of the work as a segment of time framed as a single movement or gesture.

For Carpenter, the idea of a musical work is the result of cultural evolution in the way the musical phenomenon is conceived, in which two major stages can be distinguished: «from process to product» and «from product to poem». ¹² This transformation goes hand in hand with the transformation of ars into Art —with capital letter. Thus, music undergoes the same process of historical «maturation» as the rest of the arts until it reaches the status of artistic object, which implies its standardization to the latter. ¹³ The generic term «music» acquires the meaning of «imaginary museum of musical works». ¹⁴

Leo Treitler and Rudolf Arnheim have both published critical commentaries on Carpenter’s theory. ¹⁵ Treitler’s objections focus mainly on the drastic separation and dissociation of the work as object from the experience of the subject, as well as on the dichotomous view of the piece of music as form and substance —the former containing the latter. Nor did he share Carpenter’s view of the origin of the idea of the piece of music in the Renaissance, since he argued that it had already existed in the Middle Ages. ¹⁶ Arnheim’s reflections do not fundamentally contradict Carpenter’s approach, although they seem to show a certain resistance to conceptually assume the static character linked to the idea of object and persist in the notion of music as activity, as action. Only the idea of a «self-contained package of action» resulting from the structuring of temporal events partially resolves this tension. ¹⁷ The perception of simultaneity is dependent on the relationship of the elements in a structure, and within that structure, the flow of musical events is mentally interpreted as movement in space and not in time. ¹⁸

Roman Ingarden proposes an alternative to previous conceptions of the musical work as an imaginary, ideal, material or psychic entity by making its existence dependent on the intentionality that arises from the consciousness of a subject. Despite the originality of this contribution, along with phenomenological inspiration, his theorization about the nature of the work continues to revolve around the idea of object. ¹⁹ Although there is great interest in Ingarden’s philosophy of the work of art, there is no room here to examine it in depth. Moreover, what is particularly useful in his method, in line with the approach adopted in this study, is his analysis of the aesthetic conventions and beliefs commonly accepted in Western culture about the musical work prior to or outside of any attempt at theoretical systematization or philosophical speculation. ²⁰ These convictions can be briefly summarized as follows: the work is the product of the composer’s creative effort, but once it exists, it is no longer part of his «mental existence» or his «conscious experiences»; neither is it a part of those of the audience when being listened to. The work perpetuates beyond the death of the composer and their eventual materializations in sound (performances). Furthermore, even if the different performances resemble the work and reveal its characteristics and structure, they should not be identified with it. Nor should they be identified with the score, which, unlike the work, which by nature is fundamentally one of sound, is «a defined arrangement» of graphic signs. ²¹

For Carl Dahlhaus, the editing practice itself, the ideological principles of which he analyses from the perspective of cultural history and the history of ideas, is a «correlate» ²² of the imaginary museum of musical works, whose central aesthetic category, prevalent between the late eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, is the «emphatic concept of the work». ²³ This concept is also linked to another fundamental category in this ideological system: authenticity. That the work be authentic, that is, a formal materialization of the composer’s true intention, is a necessary condition for its incorporation into the canon —into that museum. Editing acquires its meaning as a discipline the role of which consists precisely of providing the authentic version among all those possible or possibly existing versions.

Lydia Goehr’s essay, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works —again the idea of a «museum of musical works»— in which she combines philosophical reflection and historical criticism, is probably the most thorough and complete attempt to explain the work-concept, as the author herself calls it, and to describe the musical culture which, with this idea at its epicentre, developed from around 1800 onwards. Goehr’s postulates regarding the concept of the musical work as an artistic «unit» —that is, as the result of a creative act— do not contribute anything significantly new with respect to those argued by the aforementioned authors: those units that are the musical works are characterized by being «complete and discrete, original and fixed». ²⁴ In fact, it is not the concept of the work that interests us most from among Goehr’s contributions, but the idea that this concept attained the status of a canon that governed not only musical theory and aesthetics, but above all musical practice at all levels. Thanks to this position of «institutionalized centrality» ²⁵ in culture and the regulative force of the work-concept, the emancipation of the musical world as an autonomous space exclusively oriented towards the creation of fine art became possible around 1800. Therefore, what differentiates functional and subaltern —«early»— musical practices, that is to say, at the service of or dependent on other activities and institutions, from those that have no other purpose than music itself —«modern»— is not the appearance of the work-concept, existing more or less clearly before 1800, but the regulatory capacity of the practices that this concept acquired around that date. ²⁶

A new socio-economic context arose around the ideal of the work, in which new agents such as musical and concert societies, publishing houses, and the public underlay a new demand for music —for musical works— in the form of commissions of pieces from composers, concert performances from performers dedicated to the performance of those pieces, or scores supplied by new entities, the publishing houses, and a new practice, musical editing —of musical works. Once composers were freed from their condition as servants of extra-musical institutions —churches, courts— and had acquired their new role of providing an outlet to the individual expression of the transcendent through the work, they had to reconcile their newfound creative freedom with the need to adapt to the new conditions of this musical market —of musical works. As creators of personal and original products —generated by them out of nothing— and untouchable, since their form and content were definitively fixed as an expression of individual creative genius, composers began to be recognized as authors and to have ownership rights over these products. Performers were increasingly subjected to this centrality of the work and its creators, the composers. This change resulted to a certain extent in a reduction in the performance freedom that they had previously enjoyed, and led to the demand for fidelity to the work, the «Werktreue ideal». An alternative style of performance, linked to virtuosity and improvisation, was clearly at odds with this, highlighting the enormous influence of the former in the musical world which now came to the fore. In fact, according to Goehr, once entrenched in nineteenth century culture, the work-concept and Werktreue showed their full regulative force precisely as new currents emerged to challenge them. ²⁷

The Werktreue ideal had its correlate in Texttreue, of fidelity to the score as a complete representation of the work: «to be true to a work is to be true to its score». ²⁸ In my opinion, this comparison is the reason for the unprecedented importance that the musical text (the score), and notation as a system of signs for the graphic representation of musical events and parameters, acquired in this ideological musical system. ²⁹ It is logical, therefore, that over time the musical text and the functions it has in this context have become another major focus of scholars’ reflections.

In 1958, Charles Seeger distinguished between the prescriptive and descriptive functions of musical writing. ³⁰ In the former, the musical text acts as a set of instructions on how to proceed in converting it into sound; in the latter, it acts as a collection of data («report») on how a particular performance sounded. ³¹ Leo Treitler, for his part, initially considers the instructive —similar to Seeger’s prescriptive— and identifying functions of the score. ³² Treitler’s inclusion of a third function, that of «exemplification», stems from his questioning of the work as a complete and finished unity, recognizable as a structure and fully identifiable in the score —the identifying function. The exemplifying function, which identifies «not so much a characteristic structure as a certain character», ³³ is associated with a notion of the musical work that goes beyond the hegemonic model of artistic object from 1800 onwards. For this reason, I will not dwell on it now, although I will return to Treitler’s postulates later.

Finally, it is useful to mention the different functions of musical writing described by Cristina Urchueguía in 2006: ³⁴ «reservoir», «method of transmission», «instrument that enables composers to reach a certain level of structural complexity», «visualization of structure», «basis of performance», and «way of actualizing a defined musical object either by performing it or by playing it in one’s head». ³⁵ The identification of these functions is the result of the author’s reflections on musical texts as objects of interpretation, both in the sense related to performance and in the scholarly analytical sense (historical, aesthetic, musical analysis, etc.). Her critical review of the history of musical edition leads her to propose a critical edition that is somehow freed from this traditional and conflictive duality, as well as a textual criticism aimed at a new profile of critical musicians, «new “enlightened” musician», whose task is «to offer him an instrument to objectify his aesthetic understanding by means of an historical and critical framework». ³⁶

Having sketched in general terms the ideological and cultural frame of reference, in which the regulative concepts of work and text and their relations to performance practice take a central role, I shall now examine the documentary musical sources of Viardot’s Spanish songs (autographs, manuscript copies, first printed editions) and contrast their characteristics with those paradigms as an explanatory strategy.

This analysis of Viardot’s collection of songs with Spanish text shows that the notion of the musical work as well as the author’s practices of musical creation and performance do not exactly conform to the paradigm that dominated the Western musical world from 1800 onwards, which was based on the institutionalized ideal of the work-concept. Instead, as I shall endeavour to explain below, they coincide with the musical ideas and practices of a culture of musical production and practice «without the work-concept» as a regulative force. ⁶⁸

In this other framework, as described by Lydia Goehr herself, music is conceived primarily as an activity and, to a lesser extent, as a work-object. The dimension of performance, therefore, has greater prominence and preponderance and is often not separable from that of composition. In fact, composition could not only take place before the performance but also during it. The idea of performance as a creative or re-creative act of previously composed music meant the blurring of the rigid line of separation between the condition of composer —who produces works— and performer —who gives performances. Both composer and performer were integrated within one and the same person, or at least closely linked. Since the performances were occasional, ephemeral —unlike the works, which were definitive and permanent— the musical texts were fixed in an incomplete form, and it was the performers themselves who completed the music according to conventions and tastes. Music creators, moreover, did not own the copyright of the music they produced. Consequently, the reuse and exchange of their own and other people’s musical materials was assumed to be a natural and carefree standard practice. This music could be freely adapted to different circumstances, performance conditions or different musical resources. ⁶⁹

Beatrix Borchard’s description of Viardot’s compositional culture in her magnificent biography of her also corresponds to a large extent with the cultural framework outlined by Goehr. In Viardot’s case, composition is conceived as «cultural action», with a fundamentally social dimension and a certain playful component; a «jeux d’esprit» that took place in an environment of social exchange and creative spontaneity. Her salon operettas, in which improvisation was part of the social-artistic game and the musical texts were therefore incomplete, are paradigmatic artistic products of this environment. ⁷⁰

For Goehr, however, these conditions of musical creation and performance do not characterize a scene that was contemporary and alternative to the hegemonic culture centred on the work-concept, but precede it. Indeed, she associates them only with a period in which musical activity was determined by extra-musical concerns and was functional and dependent on the needs of the two main institutions that demanded music: the court and the Church. The role of musicians, servants of these institutions and without any creative autonomy whatsoever, did not stray beyond satisfying these musical needs. Thus, practices governed by the idea of music as an activity and those centred on music as an object represent «early» and «modern musical practice», respectively. ⁷¹ The provisional coexistence of both after the paradigm shift around 1800 is explained as inherent to historical processes of change in which the expressions of an earlier stage survive for some time before disappearing definitively. ⁷²

This perspective, limited to the music of the great German, French, and British composers canonized by historiography, on the one hand relegates other peripheral cultural spheres that do not belong to the centrality formed by the German-Anglo-French triangle; and on the other hand, it offers a probably simplified image of a much more complex and plural historical panorama that was evolving in different directions.

Viardot’s case is evidence of a type of musical practice in the nineteenth century that was also understood as an activity. From my perspective, this practice should not be considered a residual ideal of a bygone era on the verge of extinction, but as another form of expression, equally «modern» —to use Goehr’s own expression— and different from other kinds of musical practice governed by the work-concept. This view of the coexistence of both practices as equally «modern» is not incompatible with accepting the probable historical reality of an unequal relationship between the two. Viardot’s necessary adaptation to the editorial principles outlined above when publishing her works, for example, highlights the predominance in this period of a musical world based on the work-concept over other compositional conceptions and practices, such as her own. At the same time, this need to adapt to the rules of the dominant culture is evidence of the latter’s tendency to assimilate alternative kinds of practice, whose original nature is consequently distorted and ultimately forgotten. It would therefore be misguided to take the first printed edition of Viardot’s pieces, products of this process of assimilation, as models of her textual practices and reflections of her genuine concept of the musical work, for it would lead to denying the very process of assimilation of which they are a product and to asserting, erroneously, her original orthodox position concerning the work-concept within the musical world.

This can therefore lead us to question whether this process of assimilation was frequent and whether the conversion into closed works of musical pieces originally created on the same basis as Viardot’s was more or less normalized in that context. Similarly, it is equally pertinent to ask whether the European musical historiographical tradition, indebted in a certain way to that ideological system developed, among others, around the work-concept and composer-author, et cetera, has not also been conditioned by the force of those concepts, transmitting a distorted vision of that period by undermining or overlooking the importance of other types of musical practice. Below, we shall see that the specialist Leo Treitler makes an interesting claim: only part of the musical production of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries belongs to the archetype of work as object with final form. It should be pointed out that the consequences of this possible historiographical distortion go beyond the field of historiography itself and would determine such practical and concrete aspects as the understanding of Viardot by her present-day performers. If the aim is to perform Viardot’s works according to her thought and practice, then, as I have already pointed out, to base current performance practice on an interpretation of her scores with the critical foundations of Texttreue, or the exclusively prescriptive or instructive function of scores as complete and definitive texts, would be a conceptual error.

However, it is well known that Viardot was not shaped as a person and artist in traditional courtly and ecclesiastical settings. The space of musical practice probably most in keeping with her temperament and her understanding of the artistic fact was the nineteenth-century salon, where she spent much of her time, along with the opera house.

Viardot’s private salons, where she brought together the cream of Central European culture of the period, provided a space for the free exercise of an independent artistic practice, with an end in itself and an absolute value. They enabled an artistic activity that was both dynamic and creative, and not constrained by the ideal of the work-concept, displaying an edifying and formative function at all levels. The ideal of pure art (free from any outside dependence) and functional art (pedagogical function) were not exclusive dualities; rather, they were integrated into the same practice, though not subaltern.

Likewise, Viardot’s position in the European bourgeois and aristocratic salons where she so often appeared was, in general, that of a free artist, both economically and artistically. In contrast to the servile relationship that musicians maintained with their patrons during the period when Goehr’s idea of music as an activity predominated, Viardot performed from salon to salon as a hired and emancipated artist, participating in the new music market of the nineteenth century. In fact, the realization of her artistic ideal in her private salons, as discussed above, was made possible thanks to the economic independence she achieved as a result of her success as a singer. ⁷³

The framework described by Goehr proves similarly narrow when seeking the possible origins of Viardot’s idea of the musical work and performance practice. We noted earlier that Leo Treitler’s consideration of a third function of the musical text —the exemplifying function— was associated with a concept of the work that went beyond that of the work-object. Treitler, in his refutation of the essentialist and ahistorical ontology of the musical work of Karl Popper and Roman Ingarden, ⁷⁴ not only upholds precisely the historical character of the central concept of this ontology —the work-object— but also argues that only part of the repertoire of musical works created in Europe from Bach to the end of the nineteenth century —the «common practice period»— corresponds to this paradigm. ⁷⁵

Treitler argues that, contrary to Kendall Walton’s postulation, types of musical practice that are alternative to the central work-concept are not exclusive to cultures outside the «tradition of Western art music during the period of common practice». ⁷⁶ To achieve this, he uses a set of examples by Chopin, in which we can observe the same compositional practices that I have been identifying in Viardot’s Spanish songs. The very first of these examples, the Mazurka for piano op. 7 no. 5, presents the same problems as Aserrín VWV 1223: an instruction at the end of the score («Dal segno senza fine») indicates to the performers the recurrent and infinite repetition of the fragment, leaving the work open and without end.

The absence of definitive structure and the open form of this and other works by Chopin leads him to reaffirm historicity and «fluidity» as ontological conditions of the musical work even in the nineteenth century. In these cases, the text exercises an exemplifying function, as I have explained, since it leaves different possibilities for performance open within a certain unity of style. Here too, therefore, the lines of separation between the act of composing and performing are blurred, and the historical nature of performance practices as expressions of a certain tradition, attributable to the concept of work, is also highlighted.

Jan Ekier, editor of Chopin’s complete works, provides several testimonies that illustrate the conflict that it meant for the composer to subject his «extremely lively, subtle, variegated and naturally improvisational» inventiveness to the obligation to reduce it to a definitive work-object, fixed in an equally definitive text; in other words, to submit to the process of cultural assimilation referred to above. ⁷⁷ Ekier’s exposition, however, seems to be aimed, among other things, at justifying the existence of multiple versions of Chopin’s works as evidence of his striving for the perfection of the work rather than contemplating this variability of his musical texts —its «fluidity», in Treitler’s terms— as a reflection of the idea of the work as an «epitome of possibilities of realization», as Dahlhaus might put it. ⁷⁸ One may wonder to what extent Ekier’s perspective is also conditioned by the need to assimilate Chopin’s compositional process to the Beethovenian paradigm in the introduction to a complete edition of a markedly monumental nature published in the 1970s.

This culture of creative and performance practice was not the only thing Chopin and Viardot had in common. They were close friends who enjoyed many musical experiences together at public concerts and during summer stays at Chopin and George Sand’s summer residence. Although they were key figures in mainstream nineteenth-century European artistic movements, both musicians have their cultural roots in peripheral Europe, outside the triangle of centrality outlined by Goehr. And it is in those roots where, I believe, a decisive influence on this culture of musical work and practice can be found.

It is indubitable that Viardot was influenced by the Spanish stage and folk culture passed down to her by her father, Manuel García, of which her Spanish songs are a clear example. As is well known, the improvisatory component and the concept of musical performance as something dynamic and open to new recreations in a playful-dramatic stage context are characteristic of this cultural universe deeply rooted in popular tradition. ⁷⁹ Treitler associates the unfinished or infinite nature of Chopin’s aforementioned Mazurka for piano op. 7 no. 5 with Chopin’s tendency to compose circular works and suggests several interpretative hypotheses for this tendency: «a Romantic fascination with the unfinished, or with music as expression of the infinite, Chopin’s own deep pessimism». ⁸⁰ Lastly, he raises the possibility that Chopin’s piece is «a sort of impression or portrayal of a Polish folk dance […]», ⁸¹ suggesting the probable folk origin of this idea of an open work. Generally, popular musical manifestations are characterized by their condition as a continuous musical process, whose beginning and end do not delimit a musical object but the resumption and suspension in time of a fluid and living expression —in the sense of being subject to the inventiveness of people and, therefore, to continuous reworking. ⁸²

However —and this is important in order to locate this idea of open work—, Treitler does not recognize Chopin’s piece as a mazurka (the «Polish folk dance»), but rather sees it as an impression or image of it. It is possible that behind this view lies the difficulty of overcoming the dichotomy of high culture —as the creation of an author such as Chopin who belongs to the Olympus of «high art music»— ⁸³ and popular culture, instead of considering a space of intersection where both spheres converge. In fact, Treitler’s idea of impression or portrayal implies remaining within a somewhat essentialist view and assuming that, on the one hand, there is a pure idea of the mazurka, of folk origin, and, on the other, substitutes for it (impressions, images, portrayal, etc.). Recognizing this piece as a mazurka does not necessarily mean conceiving it as the «genuine» indigenous Polish dance or, according to romantic nationalist mythology, the repository of the «Polishness» preserved in rural environments. In contrast, the notion of mazurka that I propose is as broad as that cultural space in which different dimensions (rural, urban, popular, highbrow) and concepts («authenticity», elaboration, hybridization, orality, work-object, open work, etc.) converge and negotiate. Barbara Milewski mentions Chopin’s contacts with Polish peasant music but, at the same time, highlights the important influence on the formation of his «national» style of the popular dances and songs which, far from rural areas, were part of urban musical practices in nineteenth-century Warsaw (ballets, vaudevilles, piano and salon music, operas, operettas). ⁸⁴ The —analogous— Polish and Hispanic cultural and musical environments of the nineteenth century described share the same nature of complex spaces for cultural negotiation. It is within these contexts that we should locate Chopin and Viardot’s idea of open works, with popular roots but transferred to expressions with a new meanings and functions (including that of representing the «national» at a time when the ethnic value of the popular is turning into the national value). Characteristics of popular «authenticity» such as the direct folk borrowings, the harmonic or rhythmic aspects are not relevant, but rather its status as «open» and endless music, for it is this that connects these pieces with the universe of popular musical expression. ⁸⁵

In any case, Treitler’s final hypothesis about the popular origin of the concept of the open work recognizable in Chopin’s musical practice is reinforced by the almost identical case of Viardot. And both cases, Chopin’s and Viardot’s, point to the need to recognize a space of musical practice alternative to the hegemonic European canon but equally modern, regulated by an idea of music as process and activity, nourished by the popular musical cultures of peripheral Europe. It is equally necessary to gauge the real importance as well as the degree of influence on the canonical practices themselves of these other alternative practices, which have perhaps been overshadowed in the historical narratives of music from the late eighteenth century until around 1950. Treitler himself referred, more than thirty years ago, to the interest of a history of the musical compositions of this period written against the idea of the closed work, «a thread in the history of music that is obscured when we take that idea for granted». ⁸⁶ The implications of delving into this space for the world of music editing and for current performance practices of this music would be significant indeed.

In-depth and meticulous studies of musical sources aimed at the elaboration of a critical edition can in themselves constitute a methodology at the service of a historical ontology of musical works and of philology in the broad sense, particularly if musical texts are viewed not only as objects of textual criticism but also as valuable testimonies reflecting systems of thought and cultural frameworks. The application of this method to Pauline Viardot’s songs with Spanish text shows that her concept of work does not completely fit into the concept-work or work-object paradigm. The musical experience, as she understood it, is not focused on the composition of masterpieces and definitive works but on an open creative and performance practice, in which the creative work is not determined by the categories associated with the paradigm of work that had regulated the musical world since around 1800: author, authorship, authority, authenticity, closed work, cultured canon (museum of musical works), and so on.

These considerations have important implications for today’s editors and performers, for if their approach to Viardot’s work is based on respect for the composer’s thought and her culture of musical practice, they are obliged to assume responsibility for those indeterminate or unclosed spaces in her compositions. Fidelity to Viardot should not be translated into an exact reading of her musical texts (scores), but rather into respect for her notion of a partially open work and her idea of the practice of music as an activity.

The implications of this notion of the musical work, reflected in the pieces of composers such as Viardot and Chopin, also extend to the field of historiography. This study has set out to question once again the real weight of the philosophy of the work-concept in the thinking of composers of the common practice period, and whether the heritage of printed scores, representing the model of the closed work —and in which the Western musical canon is deposited in writing— is not, to a certain extent, the product of a process of assimilation by the predominant musical culture of a culture with a more flexible concept of the musical work. In this process of assimilation, music editing, one of the main institutions of this dominant culture, and its methods in the service of establishing a definitive text as a representation of the work-object, would have played a decisive role. In order to shed further light on all these points, it is essential to continue researching the history of musical compositions, which, if not written against the idea of the work-object, as proposed by Treitler, were at least conceived on the basis of other key aspects. It is equally necessary to continue elucidating the influence of popular musical expressions, of performance traditions that bear a great weight of orality and of peripheral cultural spaces in the culture that were not wholly dominated by the work-concept from the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Consequently, approaches that associate the ideas of music as an activity, on the one hand, and as a work-object, on the other, with early and modern cultural values, respectively, need to be revised, as both ideas were equally present in the mentality of musicians from 1800 onwards, and probably in different proportions to what is generally accepted today.