Digital Editions and the Creative Work of the Performer

One of the aims of this article is to clarify and align more closely the respective priorities of researchers and practical musicians in using music notation. To that end, the first part surveys existing digital editions of music both in general and from the standpoints of different types of performer. Consideration is then given to a new ‘digital edition concept’ which might achieve more creative engagement with music on the parts of instrumentalists and singers alike. Two ostensibly conventional editions of nineteenth-century music serve as the basis of case studies that show how the notorious limitations of the printed page might be transcended more effectively and propitiously. The conclusion is that digital editions of music (DEMs) are unlikely to replace printed editions and that wholesale replacement should not be the goal in any case. Instead, in developing future DEMs for performers, the aim should be to take fuller advantage of the affordances of the digital medium so that musicians can engage with and make music all the more creatively. Only by moving conceptually beyond the stasis of ‘the material medium’ and harnessing the dynamic flux of the digital medium can the dynamic flux inherent in music itself best be captured. At the same time, it is important to recognize and respect musicians’ need for a fixed version of the score on given performance occasions, even if it is bound to be superseded thereafter.