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Just after my edition published as John Ravenscroft: Thirteen Fugues emerged from the press, I was very kindly informed by organist and harpsichordist John Collins, who had received an early copy, that he was able to identify the composer of all the fugues except the Fuga chromatica as Johann Klemm (c.1595–1659 or later), a German organist, composer and music publisher, since the set of twelve fugues in all the modes appears, in open score, in Klemm’s Partitura seu Tablatura italica. This is a collection of 36 fugues for two, three and four voices published in Dresden in 1631 and much praised in the composer’s day and for a long time afterwards, though known to very few modern scholars and performers. A modern edition of this collection, described in the informative entry for Klemm in the revised (2001) edition of the New Grove (vol. 13, pp. 667–68), was published in America by A-R Editions in 1998. The Fuga chromatica is not in Klemm’s collection or known from any sources except the two giving Ravenscroft’s name, but its stylistic similarity to the other twelve is so strong that it, too, was in my view most likely composed by Klemm. Even if it was not, Ravenscroft can no longer be regarded as the most probable composer in the light of this new situation, although his authorship cannot yet be ruled out absolutely. Perhaps future research will confirm my suspicion that it was Ravenscroft in Rome via whom the fugues reached England, which could lie behind the mistake over the composer’s name in the manuscript sources in England.
For such a mishap an editor can only meekly apologize. One always runs a risk in taking an attribution at face value, and sometimes a new find from an unexpected source can bring an unwelcome shock. Often there is time to change track before the edition is published, or else the mistake comes to light too late to make action possible. In these circumstances Edition HH and the editor have decided to withdraw the edition from sale.
Michael Talbot, February 2012
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