As part of the 2005 observances of the two hundredth anniversary of Luigi Boccherini's death, an ‘Opera Omnia’ edition was launched with the publication by Ut Orpheus Edizioni (Bologna) of the first volume out of a projected forty-five that will appear in ninety tomes. A second volume (volume 29 in the series) followed in 2007, along with the first volume of a collection of scholarly essays, Boccherini Studies, edited by Christian Speck, and in 2009 a third volume of the Opera Omnia (volume 5) has appeared, containing the Six Sonatas for Violin and Keyboard Op. 5, g25–30, edited by Rudolf Rasch. A volume of the Guitar Quintets, g445–453, is almost finished, and two more – the String Sextets Op. 23, g454–459, and the zarzuela La Clementina, g540 – are in the pipeline.

So this massive project is clearly up and running: a good time for a review. First of all, the need for such an endeavour must be reaffirmed loud and clear. Any scholar who has ever tried to work seriously on this composer will have come hard up against the woefully chaotic state of publications and editions of his music; Boccherini's legacy as a whole may be in worse shape, in terms of access to reliable materials, than that of any composer of comparable stature and productivity. In my review of Jaime Tortella's biography Boccherini: un músico italiano en la España ilustrada (Madrid: Sociedad Española de Musicología, 2002), published four years ago in this journal (Eighteenth-Century Music 2/1 (2005), 150–156), I went into some detail about the confusion and lamentation that this state of affairs has caused among scholars. As for the chaos it causes among performers, my email inbox sees a steady stream of bewildered questions about editions from musicians I have never even met.

The truth is that this situation is going to change only slowly, given how prolific a composer Boccherini was. At the current rate – a volume every year and a half, and forty volumes to go – this Opera Omnia will not be completed until 2069. Even if the project accelerates, it will take extraordinary commitment and cooperation by several generations of scholars to bring it to completion. The landscape is already littered with the skeletons of other failed attempts at comprehensiveness: Le opere complete di Luigi Boccherini, which was initiated in 1970 by Pina Carmirelli and published in Rome by the Istituto Italiano per la Storia della Musica, came to a halt in 1985 after the publication of ten volumes; Editorial Zanibon went belly-up after publishing most of the sonatas and concertos; and Hortus Musicus, which has published the symphonies, may or may not have a commitment to further comprehensiveness. In any case, none of these editions was to the highest scholarly standard.

The bicentenary of Boccherini's death was an event of sufficient importance for the Italian government to get in on the act, to the extent that the edition reviewed here enjoys its status as an ‘Italian national edition’. The Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini-Onlus, which oversees the edition project, was founded in 2005 and is based in Lucca, Italy, Boccherini's birthplace. The title and data pages of the editions acknowledge support from the Stichting-Fondazione Pietro Antonio Locatelli, the Italian Ministerio per i Beni e le Attività Culturali and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research: Council for the Humanities. The Centro is online at <http://www.luigiboccherini.org>, and here one can examine its mission statement and the biographies of its editorial staff. The project is presented as ‘a scientific edition which will cater to the needs of both performers, who wish to play this music in keeping with period practice, and scholars with a musicological approach’. Thus each volume is available both as a study score with full critical apparatus, and as a ‘practical edition’, with separate parts for chamber works, piano reductions for vocal works and (in the case of orchestral music) parts available for hire. The imminent release of the second volume of Boccherini Studies is announced there, as well as plans for volumes containing ‘documents and iconography, letters and a thematic catalogue’. The website provides a concise biography of the composer, and also serves as a gateway to several other projects, including the journal Ad Parnassum.

On the Editorial Advisory Board, Christian Speck is a familiar name, and as Director/President he appears in a place commensurate with his standing: his book Boccherinis Streichquartette: Studien zur Kompositionsweise und zur gattungsgeschichtlichen Stellung (Munich: Fink, 1987) is a monument of attentive scholarship. Yves Gérard, without doubt the doyen of Boccherini studies, appears in association with the first volume from 2005, but not thereafter. Several other senior scholars of eighteenth-century music appear on the Opera Omnia Board, presumably in an advisory capacity: Ludwig Finscher, Theophil Antonicek and Sergio Durante. Rudolf Rasch is a professor at the Universiteit Utrecht whose chief contributions up to now have been on tuning and temperament and Dutch musical history. Roberto Caro is in a special category. As director of Ut Orpheus Edizioni, the publishing house that has committed to producing this edition, he is exempt from having to give a scholarly pedigree; but an interview with him, ‘Il caso Boccherini’, appears as a link on the Ut Orpheus website and reveals him to have an astute and educated insight into the need for this edition, as well as the challenges it will face (see <http://www.luigiboccherini.com/gdm.php?l=ing>; the interview originally appeared in Il giornale della musica 237 (May 2007)).

Roberto Illiano and Fulvia Morabito make up the rest of the Editorial Board, while Luca Sala, Massimiliano Sala and Lorenzo Frassà appear elsewhere on the site as members of the Steering Committee. These are new names in Boccherini scholarship, and indeed they prove to be relatively new scholars, a number of them having trained at the Università degli Studi di Pavia. In effect we seem to have here a posse of energetic, entrepreneurial young Italian musicologists, advised by a handful of senior scholars of eighteenth-century music, with Speck – the veteran Boccherinian – at the helm.

The support offered by two organizations from the Netherlands is rather surprising; but an explanation can be found in the introductory material to the first volume, where Speck offers a brief eulogium entitled ‘Albert Dunning in memoriam’. Dunning was a Dutch musicologist, a scholar of Renaissance motets and eighteenth-century instrumental music, who worked at various times at Tübingen, Rome, Syracuse (New York), Poitiers, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Wassenaar, and who founded the Stichting Pietro Antonio Locatelli. Most of the younger scholars on the Opera Omnia Board were his protégés. Towards the end of his life, he had fomented the idea of a critical complete works of Boccherini; sadly, however, he died in June 2005 and so never saw this project bear fruit.

And then there are the names that are nowhere to be found on the Centro Studi website. I am, of course, aware that many a back-story lies behind the formation of an enterprise like this, but one can hardly fail to wonder at certain absences. Why is Gérard's name absent from the Opera Omnia after 2005? Where are the wonderful Italian Boccherini scholars Remigio Coli, Gabriella Biagi-Ravenni and, above all, Marco Mangani? Why are none of the Spaniards whose work has been at the forefront of recent Boccherini studies – Germán Labrador in particular – on the Editorial Board? What about the Americans Daniel Heartz and Timothy Noonan, who have made distinguished contributions to Boccherini scholarship?

As it turns out, one does not have to go very far to find a number of these names: in terms of both internet and postal addresses, one's destination is very close indeed. The website <http://www.luigiboccherini.it> takes one to the site of the Comitato Nazionale Luigi Boccherini, also founded in 2005, also based in Lucca, also enjoying Italian government support, and operating a Centro Studi Luigi Boccherini. (Yes, I too had to go back and look at the name of the other one to be sure of what the difference was.) A number of the luminaries named in the last paragraph appear as part of the scientific commission of the Comitato, which was founded with educational and intercultural objectives; one of its mandates is to promote ‘interchange between Lucca and Madrid, the city in which Boccherini developed the greater part of his career’. Among other projects listed on the Comitato website are a new, revised edition of Yves Gérard's grand catalogue of Boccherini's works (which originally appeared as Thematic, Bibliographic and Critical Catalogue of the Works of Luigi Boccherini, translated by Andreas Mayor (London: Oxford University Press, 1969)), to be published online; and making Boccherini source materials (manuscripts and first editions) available online to members. Further information about these endeavours is not currently forthcoming on the website, but, according to Mangani, the Gérard project is well under way and we can expect to see its first fruits within a few months. The Comitato has also recently begun an online journal dedicated to Boccherini, at <http://www.boccherinionline.it>; they welcome submissions and inquiries. Finally, Madrid's Asociación Luigi Boccherini, founded in 2003, publishes monographs or editions at the rate of one or two a year; it also maintains links to an extensive up-to-date biography, bibliography, discography and image bank, all of which are available through their website at <http://www.luigi-boccherini.org>.

The first tome of the Luigi Boccherini Opera Omnia, Arie da concerto, sets a high bar for production standards. It is large and handsome, bound in bright red cloth with Boccherini's signature stamped in gold across the cover. Inside, as the frontispiece, is the best reproduction I have ever seen of the ‘Liotard’ portrait of Boccherini, gorgeous in its full-colour format; this also appears in the second volume. The General Editorial Policy is published in Italian and in English, as is the Introduction by Speck, which is a translation and adaptation of an article on Boccherini's concert arias that originally appeared in German under the title ‘“Ma musique vocale la plus moderne”: Boccherinis Konzertarien’ in the Mozart-Jahrbuch 2000 (225–244). The essay is typical of Speck's work, rich in information, densely presented. Matters of provenance and dating for fifteen arias and one duet are inferred, as they must be since the composer did not include these works in his catalogue. Speck follows Gérard in dating all the arias to around 1792 (save the extraordinary Se d'un amor tiranno, g557, with obbligato cello and a virtuosic soprano part, which is assumed to have been composed much earlier). Speck goes further, however, and on the basis of the aria texts (all of them by Pietro Metastasio save one, which is ‘portmanteau’ Metastasio) hypothesizes that the arias may have been written as some kind of set. He also remarks interestingly on the fact that by 1792 Metastasio was pretty far out of date, although Boccherini refers to these pieces in a letter to Pleyel as ‘ma musique vocale la plus moderne’. There follows an analysis of the three main formal types found in the solo arias, putting them in their original dramatic contexts in the dramme by Metastasio (a useful touch). That is the closest that this essay comes to a consideration of the arias in performance; there is no further context given for the conditions under which such music would have been presented and heard, nor any advice on style for the would-be interpreter.

The music font is small but clear, easy to read. The format is spacious, in keeping with the luxurious style of the edition; so spacious, indeed, that this would make a frustrating conductor's score, requiring a lot of page-turning. Certainly, it is utterly out of the question for a vocal score. This really is a study score; the ‘practical’ version would be a necessity for any performance. And this leads me to the one feature of this edition that gives me really serious cause for concern: its price. The Opera Omnia website announces that ‘the price of each tome has been fixed – up to 2010 – at Eur 190.00’ (<http://www.luigiboccherini.com/home.php?l=ing>), while performing copies of each aria, whether in score or piano reduction, will be €15.

Now, there has long been a place in the world for expensive ‘monument’ editions, and that place has generally been major institutional libraries. However, support for such libraries is not exactly flourishing in the United States; I doubt it is doing much better elsewhere. Every librarian I have spoken to about this edition has immediately mentioned its price. At my own university, the Music Library has elected to proceed piecemeal rather than subscribe; they have purchased the study scores, but have declined to acquire the ‘practical’ scores (sixteen pieces at €15 each adds up to an additional €240). This has obvious and immediate repercussions for the music's ready performability in at least one university community. To complicate things further, Speck's biography on the Opera Omnia website states that ‘recently he found three new manuscripts of Concert Arias at the Biblioteca de la Catedral of Santiago de Compostela’. What to do? Will he publish an Appendix to volume 1? (And will it, too, ring in at €190?)

The next volume to appear in the series, number 29, contains works from the other end of Boccherini's career. The Duets for violins were probably written in 1761 and were first published in Paris in 1768 by Louis Balthazard de La Chevardière, then by José Palomino in Madrid in 1772, by Luigi Marescalchi reprinting Palomino, then Johann Nepomuk Hummel in Amsterdam, the firm Longman, Lukey & Co. in London, Jean-Georges Sieber in Paris, then the French firm Carli in Paris in 1817; and so the list continues. Rasch's Introduction details the long and chequered publication history of these little pieces, and points out ‘a serious neglect of them both in the literature on Boccherini and by modern editors … There are no specialized articles about the Duets’ (xxiv). Until now, at least. Rasch provides a detailed discussion of formal traits of the sonatas (modulatory tendencies, key relations among movements, reprise schemes in sonata-procedure movements, textures in a two-voice medium, periodic structuring, and so on). It is a rigorously exemplary analytical treatment of some very slight music, and its very rigour prompts me to ask: to whom is this information useful and why? It is not connected to a larger view of the music's function, or the meanings that arose and still arise from performance contexts. I am no enemy of formal analysis by any means; it can promote insight at a level that is not otherwise possible. But I do question its pursuit at the expense of a contextual view. Cannot the two perspectives communicate with one another? In this case, his tightly work-centred focus causes Rasch to miss an opportunity: the critical eclipse of this music, which he himself mentions, probably has to do with the fact that it was produced for amateurs to play at home; and until quite recently, amateur genres lacked sufficient musicological prestige to rate much serious treatment.

The study score of the Duets could, at a pinch, be used for performance, since a fair amount of each piece appears on a given page; but only with the addition of judiciously xeroxed leaves, as the page-turns are completely unworkable. I mention this not to incite my violinist colleagues to violate copyright, but simply to acknowledge that they will almost certainly do so, since the price of €18 per duet for the ‘practical edition’ is fairly steep.

I sincerely wish I could offer constructive suggestions to the editors and the publisher about how to reduce the price of the Opera Omnia. One option would be to rethink the proportion of musical score to critical and introductory material, which, in the case of these Duets, just seems silly: 35 pages of introductory material + 53 pages of score + 57 pages of critical apparatus. One has to wonder whether it was really necessary to print the entire introductory and critical apparatus in three languages successively. These editions could be made more accessible to state-funded libraries and unfunded musicians by reducing the presentation of editorial material to one language (translations could appear on the internet). Perhaps, also, the gorgeous frontispiece in full colour is not really necessary. Perhaps the format could be slightly reduced and the page margins made less generous.

There is no doubt that such measures would chip away at the beauty and monumentality of the edition, of course, and this would be a shame, in view of the opportunity that this edition represents – to honour (finally!) a composer in a manner that befits his greatness. But an accord must be reached with the needs of a community of scholars and performers who would like to have (finally!) ready, reliable access to his work. Ultimately, however, I think that this stand-off between production standards and affordability may be less necessary than it used to be, for as a cursory survey of some of the other Boccherini websites will suggest, it is possible to make ingenious and elegant use of the internet to promote Boccherini's legacy and the critical work being done around it. In any case, sooner or later I think this Opera Omnia project will find itself confronting the question of how it can more effectively make itself also an ‘Opera pro Omnibus’.