Alexander Becker (RWA): Report on Experience with Edirom

20 July 2010

The Reger Edition of the Works (RWA) is conceived as a hybrid edition, providing a conventionally printed music text with a digital critico-scholarly apparatus. This presentation form offers two fundamental advantages: To be mentioned, first of all, is the sheer quantity of material that the editor must collate, utilize, and evaluate; a plenitude that could not be presented in a mere print edition for any number of reasons, not least of them the absolute minimum of user-friendliness (in any case, not without having to answer for a “hubristic” rather than a “hybrid” edition). In a digital medium, on the other hand, quantitative limitations hardly play a role any longer– and furthermore, targeted information can be supplied and called up there (and only there) where it is of use. Secondly, the critico-textual apparatus benefits even in narrower sense from its preparation for the digital medium. Such a preparation enables us to illustrate the sources concerned and interlink editorial annotations with these source illustrations, as well as also with each other. Requisite for this is naturally appropriate high-performance software: That is Edirom.

Although the RWA is thus fundamentally based on a digital apparatus, we had decided at the outset of the project to still carry out the spadework for the first volume as “analogue” – to begin with, for time reasons: Scans of the sources first had to be acquired and/or produced, editorial guidelines worked out, and standards for the structure and scope of the apparatus developed, before implementation with the aid of Edirom could begin. Retrospectively I consider it important, if not anyhow, as in our case, because of the need for a firm schedule, to begin editorial work and preliminary considerations as analogue, that is, without the assistance, but even also without the presets of a program. Every editorial subject has its idiosyncrasies and special needs, and it is advisable to form an idea of its implementation no matter what the available instrumentarium (to a certain extent freely, in accordance with Beethoven’s word on the “wretched violin,” which, though, proved here to be a wonderful instrument!).

Still, when once the structural basis for the edition is laid and the source evaluation begins, deployment of Edirom is to be recommended as early as possible. Whoever has once collated or proofread with the help of the software is not going to want to do without it any longer. The merits of Edirom for collating, Joachim Veit has already adequately described (cf. “Doing without is no longer conceivable”), and I can only second him! Incidentally, Edirom should even be entrusted to all editors who ultimately have foregone the digital editing of sources in favor of an analogue music edition: Because no one should be without the bar-by-bar synchronized presentation of the sources, permitting the immediate manifestation of their variants.

The attraction of Edirom software is its many-sidedness and flexibility – a feature that is, at least in equal measure, to be attributed, of course, to the support and competence of the research team of the same name. I can say that time and again we were surprised at how many things – and especially how quickly – the colleagues in Detmold made whatever in connection with the RWA we desired possible, but what often appeared hardly realizable technically.

All the same, we must not underestimate the necessity of a training period of several months in order to so understand the mechanics of the software that its possibilities can be amply exploited and standards for formatting and interconnecting can be stipulated (in our case this had required about half a year). Perhaps it is possible to develop a digital edition based on Edirom even without competent support from Detmold, though I imagine it would be very arduous and not even edifying.

Music editors are primarily musicologists and merely users with respect to the utilized EDV. Yet, independently producing and formatting texts based on XML, as the program requires, cannot be taken for granted today to the same degree as, for instance, knowledge about, for instance, (common) word processing; guidance is needed. All the more is the same true for the use of advanced program options. But above all, merely utilizing Edirom as an existing program without at the same time furthering its development and adaptation for the purpose at hand, at least in the intermediate term, means a step back.

The Edirom software is a milestone for editorial praxis. To keep it current technically and in content, requires a structured collaboration of editors and information scientists, as has transpired through the Detmold research project. For this, as editors of the Reger Edition of the Works, my colleagues and I owe our heartfelt thanks.