RUDOLF INNIG

In memory of Hans-Martin Theopold

"Contact with Günter Henle was established immediately after the founding of the publishing house, when Theopold expressed his great enthusiasm for the first Urtext editions of the newly founded music publishing house. An extensive correspondence from the publishing house's archive was bequeathed to the Lippe State Library in 2014 in order to make it accessible to the interested public in the long term.

This correspondence proves, on the one hand, Theopold's strong interest in musical source and text issues, and, on the other hand, his initial strict rejection (!) of fingerings in such text-critical editions: "Because fingerings are and remain an individual matter despite all their quality" (letter to Günter Henle dated May 26, 1949). Günter Henle, however, is not put off and insists on the necessity of fingerings in his Urtext editions: "It is better to publish the Urtext [...] with fingerings that are unnecessary for a few or even, I admit, may be found disturbing here and there" (Letter to Hans-Martin Theopold dated September 17, 1953)."

(Website of the G. Henle Verlag Munich on November 29, 2014, with kind permission of the publisher)