New Senfl Edition

The special esteem held for Ludwig Senfl by his contemporaries and his outstanding compositional technique led to attempts at a scholarly edition of all his works shortly after the discipline of musicology was established. Nevertheless, a considerable part of his oeuvre is still not available in an edition. Musicological research can currently only fall back on two fragmentary editions, which only reproduce a portion of his oeuvre using inconsistent editorial guidelines and which rely on a partial set of sources that has in the intervening years been significantly expanded: thus, the volumes of the two incomplete editions (Theodor Kroyer, 1903; and Ludwig Senfl, Sämtliche Werke, 1937-74) have until now served as the primary reference works.

A comprehensive and in-depth study of the most important Renaissance composer of the German-speaking world in the first half of the sixteenth century has therefore been hindered due to the lack of basic information. Moreover, the incomplete editions have led to a distorted perception of Senfl primarily as a composer of lieder.

Following the compilation of the catalogue raisonée of works and sources, it therefore seemed urgently necessary to inaugurate a new complete edition of all of Ludwig Senfl’s compositions (New Senfl Edition).

This new complete edition, which has been in preparation since 2015, is designed to produce a philologically reliable edition in several modules, according to uniform editorial guidelines and based on the current state of research, with a comprehensive description of sources, transparency in the creation of the musical text, flexibility in use, and extensive contextual information.

Preparation of the complete works according to uniform editorial standards should correct the assessment of Senfl as a composer, thus creating an important prerequisite for counteracting a distorted historical image of music after 1500 in the German-speaking world. The edition will enable a more differentiated view of Renaissance historiography, whose perspective is still dominated by the monolithic importance of Franco-Flemish composers and their subsequent replacement by Italian composers.

We began the edition with those works by Senfl of which the smallest proportion has so far been accessible in a modern edition: the motets. First, the 103 motets for four and five voices were edited in three volumes. The volumes of the second module, currently in progress, bring together the 6- and 8-voice motets, the canons, the Magnificat settings and the Mass Ordinary settings.

The volumes will be published successively in the series Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich (Volume 163).

FWF Stand-alone Project P 27469
Project duration: 2015-2018