Some time in the indefinite future I'm going to be editing a publication with some Wagner texts, and it will fall to me to decide whether to spell words with the sz ligature (ß) or with the modern "ss" spelling.
If anyone has opinions on the matter, or can point me to a good discussion of it on the Web, I'd love to hear it. (I would welcome opinions on the question of sz ligature in old texts generally or with regard to Wagner specifically.)
Most contemporary quotations I've seen use the modern spelling, but I kind of like the authenticity of preserving the older spelling. I'm not well educated on the question, though, so I'm seeking advice from others who know better than I do. I'm not so much interested in a yes or no answer as getting a feel for what the historical background is, what considerations of context go into making the decision, how it will be perceived by readers, etc. For what it's worth, the target audience of my publication would be English-speaking opera fans most of whom don't know much German.
thanks mdl
If you talk about "modern 'ss' spelling" you have to take into account that in modern German we still have 'ß' and 'ss' side by side, even after the last orthography reformation a few years ago (or better: still going on). It is only in Switzerland where 'ß' isn't used at all.
If you want to modernize orthography of historical texts you will have to be very careful about how to achieve it:
a) know what is the correct spelling in modern German
b) decide which aspects do you want to modernize
- another common problem with this is the use of
punctuation marks that has changed
- Wagner will surely have used the old forms with 'th'
like 'Thal' that is today 'Tal'
Modernization is a non-trivial issue with publication of historical texts even in the original country. And if you do not by chance have the assistance of native speakers (preferrably with experience in editing historical texts) you can probably avoid embarrassing mistakes by keeping strictly to the original.
(But even then you have the problem of detecting and dealing with "obvious printing errors").
My 2ct Urs _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
