Last night, I pulled a score out of a box to catalog, with the innocuous identification of Reyer. La Statue. I was vaguely familiar with this work, having cataloged several issues of the vocal score some years ago, in the Ward Collection of Opera Scores at our Loeb Music Library. I thought to myself, oh nice, now we have a full score also.
I do love working on the Peyrotte Collection! You can read a bit about the background, and the myriad joys of cataloging this collection in an earlier blog. Turning the page, I found an inscription from Choudens, the publisher, identifying the score as the first impression of the edition. But even for a full score, this thing weighs in like a brick, and is about as thick at 3.5 inches. Unusual for an octavo, or smaller format of score.
Under the inscription is the printed list of the cast in the first performance in Paris at the Théâtre Lyrique, 11 April 1861, which I was easily able to confirm in contemporary articles in Le Ménéstrel, by way of RIPM Online. My working hypothesis is that this inscription came to Reyer with the score, hot off the presses of the first edition in 1861. But then …
Paging through the score, I immediately saw that it was about half manuscript. And sure enough, on the verso of the cast page above, Reyer himself indicated that the score was corrected in his hand.
The remaining printed portions are full of little corrections here and there, changing an accidental, adding slurs over notes, correcting rests as in this case, etc. But the manuscript portions constitute a significant expansion of the score. I remembered from cataloging the vocal scores that La Statue went through several revisions, some of which are discussed in the Wikipedia article. Could this score be the basis for the second edition full score, printed in 1903 for use in the production at the Paris Opera? One of the largest manuscript inserts (at 132 pages) is a ballet.
The final clue for me came with an examination of the printed second edition full score record in the British Library catalogue online. “Including the following additional pages: 22/1-3, 23/1-5, 46 bis, 46/1-4, 51/1-3, 78/1-3, 85/1-4, 208/1-31, 245/1-8, 257/1-5, 278/1-20, 315/1, 439/1-10, 468/1-3.” Just compare this pagination (remembering that the British Library pagination will be printed rather than manuscript, and therefore take up less room) with my inserts, where the manuscript sections are noted in brackets: “1 score (iv unnumbered pages, 23, [24, 24A-24H], 25-46, [46A-46I], 47-51, [1], [52A-52H], 53-78, [13], 80-84, [14], 86-208, [20], 211-212, [48], 213-244, [20], 245-256, [16], 258-278, [24], 279-316, [132], 317-439, [13], 441-468, [8], 469-528 pages).” It seems that Choudens didn’t bother to re-paginate the score. I’m convinced! While the inserted manuscripts appear to be in a copyist hand, they still clearly document Reyer’s expansion, and provide us with a fascinating glimpse into the musical path from the Théâtre Lyrique to the Opéra. Thank you, Martin and Peyrotte, for saving this score for us.
[Thanks to Andrea Cawelti, Ward Music Cataloger, for contributing this post.]