IMSLP Forums

I have just acquired a nice recording of the Polish Songs (Op.74) performed in Polish, with the full texts of the songs in the CD booklet.

So instead of complaining about the lack of availability of the score in the original language, I am coming up with an idea.

What if I printed out a copy of my "well-known commercial resource's" German edition of the Chopin-Lieder, deleted the German text (and the "well-known commercial resource" logo, of course), and typed in the Polish words myself?

This would not be based on any editor or edition, but it would be word-for-word from the original Polish poems by S. Witwicki (1801-1847), L. Osinski (1775-1838), B. Zaleski (1802-1886), A. Mickiewicz (1798-1855), W. Pol (1807-1872), and Z. Krasinski (1812-1859).

How would the copyright situation stand with something like this?

Aldona

There would be no copyright violated in doing such a thing that I can think of. It's also doubtful that one could claim their own copyright in doing it, either - just in case someone had the idea before you did.

Why do you need to get rid of the translation? Is it still protected?

I just want to have a nice neat-looking score with a single line of text - I don't think there would be room to have both languages without it looking cluttered. (especially for strophic songs like "The Maiden's Wish" which have several verses printed on the same staff).

The only printed Polish edition I'm aware of is the Chopin Complete Works edition edited by Paderewski (who died in 1941, so it would not be PD in life+70 countries - as well as being difficult and expensive to obtain from Poland, as I discovered when I tried repeatedly.)

Aldona

If you want to see an example of editing to restore an original text, I did that a few weeks ago with one of Cui's songs. See No. 2 of Op. 66.

Since you'd be altering the print of the edition, you should probably put a note about that on the cover/t.p. if present, and on the first page of each song.

My method for doing this was primitive, I guess. I loaded each TIFF into Microsoft Paint and used the text tool to insert a few adjacent words at a time. You might have better software.

...hehehe...nothing that fancy or hi-tech for me...I'll be using the good old correction tape/ liquid paper, and cutting and pasting (literally) text typed up on Word. Then scanning the resulting pages.

(Sounds primitive, I know - I did a biology assignment that way in my last year of high school, although I didn't even have a scanner then and had to photocopy the finished product. I got top marks so it can't have been too bad.)

Having had a chance to print out and study "well-known commercial resource's" version of the Chopin songs, I have discovered the following:

1. It is identical to the version currently on IMSLP. (same font, type, layout, etc).

2. It actually has two lines of text already: one in German (by unknown translator) and one in English (by Theodore Baker 1851-1934).

So what do people think? Which one should I replace - the German or the English?

(to me, both are equally cringe-worthy as I am generally pedantic about Lieder being in their original language.)

Aldona

I would remove both, as the less on a score the clearer it is to read.

On the subject of non-original texts in scores, I attended a performance the other day of Arthur Honegger's Le Roi David and the library copy of the score I had with me only had a spectacularly poor English translation of the text, and I had to resort to following both the concert programme and the score at the same time

Deinonychus wrote:[...] I attended a performance the other day of Arthur Honegger's Le Roi David and the library copy of the score I had with me only had a spectacularly poor English translation of the text, and I had to resort to following both the concert programme and the score at the same time

That might be the translation by Edward Agate.

Lyle Neff wrote: That might be the translation by Edward Agate.

Indeed it was. There was a much better anonymous translation in the programme for the concert - though one that doesn't always scan to the required number of syllables.