Omkring udgivelsen af »Balders Død«

Abstract

The article is intended to be seen in relation to my edition of Johannes Ewald's and Johan Ernst Hartmann's Singspiel »Balders Død« (The Death of Balder), which is being published simultaneously as Dania Sonans VII (1980). The greatest problem connected with the preparation of the edition has been the absence of a complete score, a lack attributable to the fact that the full scope of the required musical forces could not be contained on the music paper in use for the Royal Theatre's scores at the time of composition. The Royal Theatre's surviving score (source A) was copied in the summer of 1792 and represents the work more or less in its final form, but it is defective and inaccurate. Nevertheless , since it must be a copy of the composer's score it is of particular value for containing parts which have disappeared from the performance material. The composer's original score has been lost but it must have been used for all the performances conducted by the composer himself, and it seems probable that it continued to be used by J.A.P. Schulz, since it is otherwise difficult to account for the fact that the theatre was obliged to have another copy made when Hartmann retired as concert master i 1792. Scores in Hartmann's autograph for a series of numbers, some of which have never been used, are in the Royal Library (source B), which also owns a score and parts for an aria which must have been written as late as in 1792 and is included in the edition as no. 7. Finally, a collection of scores (source C) is attached to my study »Det heroiske syngespil 'Balders Død' belyst ved en gennemgang af det bevarede musikalske opførelsesmateriale« (The heroic Singspiel 'The Death of Balder' elucidated by means of an examination of the surviving musical performance material), which is deposited in the Royal Library. It has been possible to reconstruct these scores from the performance material because in addition to the orchestral parts a prompter's book from 1779 containing the vocal parts with text underlaid has also survived. There is evidence to show that the theatre had a complete score of »Balders Død« copied in 1786 but this seems not to have been in the theatre's possession in 1792. Its preparation was perhaps occasioned by the prospect of a performance of »Balders Død« in Regensburg in 1788. The lack of a reliable score as a source has meant that the edition has had to be based on the surviving performance material which, like other orchestral materials of the time, is carelessly written and consequently provides a disagreeably diffuse kind of source with variant and mutually contradictory readings of innumerable details from part to part.
An account of what information it is possible to give concerning the changes which the work underwent during the period from the first performance in 1779 until 1792, when the version of which an edition is now published was copied out, has not been included in the edition, where instead reference is made to this article . It is therefore natural that a very considerable part of the article should be concerned with the work of the copyist Joh. Lüdecke. Thanks to the quite exceptional exactness with which he drew up his statements of account and to his care for the preservation of the earlier versions when he inserted his changes in the performance material, it is possibie to explain the process of development of the work in nearly all its details. This is shown schematically in Appendix 2 of the article.
The information available concerning the musicians who took part in the performances in 1791 and 1792 agrees exactly with the requirements of the reconstructed score, both as to number of musicians and their distribution among the various groups of instruments. As Appendix 3 of the article is given a list of the musicians who participated in the performances in November 1791.
Judging from the information available concerning the theatre's efforts to give the piece as worthy a premiere as possible in 1779, and in consideration of what is known of the opposition of the classically-educated circle to the »barbarism« which was spreading its influence by means of blank verse and the cultivation of Shakespeare and Ossian, it seems obvious that the premiere of »Balders Død« must have been not only the greatest theatrical undertaking of the period but also a daring one. Fortunately it was crowned with success, and as a result it provided the opportunity to demonstrate convincingly that the Danish Singspiel as an art form, Scandinavian subject matter and the nordic gods were fully qualified to take their place on the national stage.
Finally, as background to an understanding of the construction of the final chorus, it is argued that the commonly-accepted view that a certain painting by the theatre artist Cramer represents the closing scene of »Balders Død« in an actual theatrical performance must be mistaken.