ABSTRACT
Between 1780 and 1820, Clementi’s output circulated widely throughout continental Europe. His works were reissued by numerous French publishers, including Bailleux, Imbault, Castaud and Porro, Boyer, Sieber and Pleyel and also reprinted and redistributed by many others. Almost all of the first English editions of Clementi’s compositions refer to at least one French one. The same can be said of the publishing networks encompassing German-speaking countries, including Artaria, Torricella, Mollo, and Hoffmeister, K�hnel, Peters, Schott, and so forth. Clementi is likely to have been one of the most frequently and widely published foreign composers in Vienna during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and Artaria was probably Clementi’s most frequent publisher. This paper will examine a great number of editions issued before 1800 by Artaria, showing evidence that Artaria’s production of Clementi’s works virtually excluded authoritative editions. Intimately related as it was to the Parisian trading system, Artaria’s output exemplifies the widespread dissemination of Clementi’s work among publishers that operated mainly throughout Paris, Leipzig, Offenbach, Mannheim and Vienna. Many of the Parisian and Viennese editions advertised and released during the 1780s and 90s demonstrate significant textual corruption. Examination of these facilitates an increased understanding of the process by which errors, erroneous readings and variants were inherited in Artaria’s Clementi editions. This leads in turn to questions concerning the quality of the sources used as references, along with the handschrifts that publishers adopted during the pre-engraving process, and raises doubts about the quality of the text eventually transmitted and performed.
