Concept of Work and Performance Practice in Nineteenth-Century Music: An Approach through the Critical Edition of Pauline Viardot-García’s Spanish Songs
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/anuariomusical.2025.80.623Keywords:
Ontology of music, critical musical editing, performance practice, nineteenth-century music, Pauline Viardot-García, Spanish song, vocal musicAbstract
The problems posed by the editing of the set of songs with Spanish text composed by Pauline Viardot-García (1821-1910) led me to question myself about the ontological condition of these works and about the culture of the musical practice of their author. This study, which aims to answer these questions, employs a methodology in service to a historical ontology of musical works and to philology in a broad sense. The musical texts of the Spanish songs by Viardot are considered not only as objects of textual criticism but also as valuable testimonies of systems of thought and cultural frameworks. The results of the study will show that conceptions of the musical work and artistic practice in general of Pauline Viardot do not correspond completely to those that were predominant in the hegemonic musical culture of the West from the beginning of the nineteenth century. These conclusions have implications for today’s performers and editors, since fidelity to Viardot’s thought —if this is the criterion on which they base their approach to this author— does not translate into an exact reading of her musical texts, but rather into respect for her notion of a partially open work. From a historiographical point of view, this paper puts forward a revised understanding of the significance of the closed work paradigm in the so-called common practice period and examines the mechanisms of cultural assimilation that may have partly shaped the heritage of printed scores and, with it, the Western musical canon.
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