In musical encyclopedias Giovanni Battista Viotti is usually presented as one of the greatest violinists of his time, both the last representative of an Italian tradition that started with Corelli and the founder of a modern French violin school in the nineteenth century (see Chappell White, ‘Viotti’, in Grove Music Online oxfordmusiconline.com (31 January 2020)). His twenty-nine concertos have indeed entered the violin repertory. This edition of Viotti's last three quartets (wII:13–15, composed in London in 1812 and published in 1817) reveals a lesser-known yet equally fascinating side of this composer. Supervised by Warwick Lister, a scholar and professional violinist himself, this edition is in line with the mission of the Società Editrice di Musicologia (SEdM, founded in 2012) to bring together musicologists and musicians in promoting eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italian music through the publication of both musical editions and scholarly works. This edition of Viotti's wII:13–15 joins three previously published volumes of the composer's quartets, two edited by Mariateresa Dellaborra (Sei quartetti concertanti per due violini, viola e violoncello Op. 1, wii:1–6 (Rome: Società Editrice di Musicologia, 2014) and Sei quartetti concertanti per due violini, viola e violoncello Op. 3, wii:7–12 (Rome: Società Editrice di Musicologia, 2014)) and one edited by Dellaborra in collaboration with Claudio Paradiso (Tre quartetti per flauto, violino, viola e violoncello Op. 22, wii:16–18 (Rome: Società Editrice di Musicologia, 2018)). SEdM is thus offering a complete edition of Viotti's quartets, filling in the gaps of the rare and selective pre-existing modern editions, and providing a counterpart to the complete recordings put out over the last few decades. Published both in score and as separate parts, this carefully prepared edition is preceded by an Introduction to Viotti's quartets as well as a Critical Apparatus in Italian and English that fruitfully draws from various musicological sources and reference works; it includes a very detailed section on performance practice. This edition will therefore benefit both scholars and performers.

In his Introduction, Lister proposes a categorization of Viotti's quartets based on the work of Mara Parker (‘The String Quartets’, in Massimiliano Sala, ed., Giovanni Battista Viotti: A Composer between the Two Revolutions (Bologna: Ut Orpheus, 2006)) and Roger Hickman (‘The Flowering of the Viennese String Quartet in the Late Eighteenth Century’, The Music Review 50 (1989), 157–180). After presenting the context in which these works were composed and created, the editor proceeds to show the composer's stylistic evolution across Op. 1, Op. 3, Op. 22 and the last three quartets published in this edition. Op. 1 is described as a ‘quatuor concertant, a typically Parisian genre’, while Op. 3 represents ‘an evolution towards the quatuor brillant . . . with a more demanding and soloistic first violin part, the other three parts proportionately less prominent’ (xxvi). Conscious of the overall difficulty of dividing string quartets into categories, Lister comments about Viotti's last quartets that ‘it is not entirely clear to what category, if any, they belong’. These works are finally defined as ‘Viennese quatuors brillants’, mid-way between the ‘Viennese classical quartet’ (without, however, the motivic work that is supposed to characterize that type) and the ‘Parisian quatuor brillant’ (yet with all of the instruments playing virtuosic passages) (xxvi).

For this reason, it indeed seems hard to categorize Viotti's last quartets, as they constantly refer to other musical genres. Unsurprisingly for a concert artist of this sort, references to concertos abound. The fast movements are punctuated by many virtuosic sections, shared among all four instruments. They can even take the form of real cadenzas, as at the end of the slow opening of movement 1 of Quartet wII:14, in which violin 1, violin 2 and cello each have an exuberant fermata cadenza. These quartets also stand out for their rich and varied textures. The relationships between the four parts constantly change. The quartet can turn into an orchestra through the thickening of its textures or unison parts (see, for example, bars 24–39 of the last movement of wII:14, in which a unison passage culminates in a cello solo). Yet in other passages, the texture builds on the tight interplay of short patterns played by different instruments (see, for example, the transition in the first movement of Quartet wII:13, bars 33–48). Finally, in addition to a possible reference to Tamino's aria ‘Dies Bildnis’ from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, which Lister notes at the beginning of the first movement of wII:13, several parts of Viotti's last quartets evoke opera in a broader way (in the Introduction we are reminded that the violinist directed several theatres). Thus the beginning of wII:14, with its alternations of fortissimo orchestral chords and pianissimo staccato, suggests a scene from an opera buffa. In addition, the many cello solos marked con espressione create a strong vocal quality.

Another reading of these works could have linked these various references to other genres to the many contexts in which quartets were played at the time. As Lister notes, Viotti was not only a concert artist, but also a chamber musician who played quartets frequently and in diverse contexts, from private parties with a mixture of amateur and professional musicians to public concerts given in professional settings like the Philharmonic Society of London in 1813 and 1814, and even to sessions in which he read his last opuses with the members of Pierre Baillot's quartet in Paris in 1814. The physical, visual and social dimensions of musical performance were undoubtedly essential for the violinist, and the varied contexts of his practice certainly enriched his compositions. Thus references to concerto or opera in Viotti's last quartets should not necessarily be opposed to the ‘Viennese quatuor’, which not only sometimes displays these kinds of patterns, but also was played in contexts where it was associated with other forms of entertainment (see Nancy November,Beethoven's Theatrical Quartets, Opp. 59, 74 and 95 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 25). For example, we know that Baillot would end his public quartet sessions (Paris, 1814–1840) – the programmes of which centred on works by Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven – with various airs variés of his own composition. Virtuosic and canonical pieces could therefore be played one after another in soirées praised for their elitist and avant-garde spirit. Viotti's last quartets provide a fascinating testimony to the fact that this genre, far from being the pure abstraction often described by historiography, was porous to other instrumental and vocal genres with which it could blend even in the conditions of its practice (see November, Beethoven's Theatrical Quartets, 19–22).

After presenting the stylistic characteristics of Viotti's last quartets – especially the originality of their harmonies – Lister offers a rigorous Critical Apparatus. His commitment to transparency is shown in the way he details the nature of his interventions and in the way they are presented in the score and notes. He discusses many aspects of the notation at length (slurs, dynamics, accents, articulations, appoggiaturas and so forth), relating them to matters of performance practice (once again, the editor draws on a large corpus of scholarly references). He considers the question of standardizing the various ways in which articulation, tempo and ties were notated (as they sometimes vary considerably between the first four editions used as the main reference points for the present enterprise). We can only praise the fact that Lister has frequently opted not to homogenize inconsistent notation, a choice more likely to spark the imagination and creativity of modern performers. Similarly, rather than systematize what might appear to be inconsistency between the parts or between parallel segments of a movement, the editor has also chosen to preserve diversity; for example, he does not indicate how trills should begin or end, to allow for more varied choices of execution. He does standardize some passages, such as those involving imitations or tutti sections, yet does not explain why he did not apply the principle of variety in those cases as well. In such instances, the standardization is not signalled in the score itself but only in the notes (xxix), and performers may wrongly believe it to be a conscious wish of the composer.

The main contribution of this edition is to disseminate knowledge about a little-known aspect of Viotti's career through making it possible to study and perform his last quartets. But most importantly, the reader will appreciate the fine editorial choices that have been made, which – far from reducing the genre to a prevailing ideal of homogeneity between the parts – emphasize the variety of relationships possible among the instruments, as well as the external references that can be heard in the pieces. This new edition will undoubtedly spark new interpretations that will shed further light on the rich and subtle writing of Viotti's quartets.