Publication of the complete edition Joseph Haydn Werke began in 1958, and will be finished in about 2018. By that time 113 volumes will be on hand, complemented by 104 critical reports. These Kritische Berichte were at first printed separately, but from 1980 on they have been included in the corresponding volumes.
Two earlier attempts to present Haydn's entire oeuvre in a modern edition had failed. The first one, mounted by chief editor Eusebius Mandyczewski, was launched in 1907 and then terminated in 1933, with only ten volumes having been released. In 1950–1951 a new effort was made, for which H. C. Robbins Landon prepared the ground. It was organized by the Haydn Society of Boston/Vienna and headed by the Danish scholar and Haydn pioneer Jens Peter Larsen, who in his dissertation of 1939 (published as Die Haydn-Überlieferung (Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard)) had revolutionized knowledge of the surviving sources and their manuscript and print tradition. This second project expired after just four volumes, though it then underwent a smooth transition to the Joseph Haydn-Institut at Cologne: a few volumes (among them those for the oratorio Il ritorno di Tobia) that were at that time being prepared for publication by the Haydn Society were incorporated into the new edition.
The Joseph Haydn-Institut, founded in 1955, again under Larsen's leadership, has assembled an index of all sources, which are dispersed worldwide, and assembled microform reproductions of the relevant ones as a basis for the comprehensively conducted editorial process. Soon after the publication of the first volumes Larsen was succeeded by Georg Feder, who over the course of three decades developed a set of decisive editorial principles. Over the years more than fifty scholars have worked on the complete edition, some of them as employees of the institute, some as external contributors. The publishing house is the G. Henle Verlag in Munich, since Günter Henle was one of the leading figures when the institute was founded in 1955.
Joseph Haydn Werke will thus not only be the first scholarly edition, but actually the first complete edition of the composer's works altogether. Many works by Haydn have been published here for the first time in their entirety, such as his operas, the baryton trios or the more than four hundred arrangements of British folksongs that Haydn wrote in his late years. The volumes are arranged in thirty-two series (Reihen), beginning with the instrumental music (Reihe I comprises the symphonies, Reihe XII the string quartets, Reihe XVIII piano sonatas and so forth) and followed by the vocal music (for instance, Reihe XXIII for the masses, Reihe XXV for Italian operas and Reihe XXXII for folksong arrangements). Within a series the works are, wherever possible, given in chronological order.
With regard to chronology, the symphonies are the most problematic genre. The familiar numbering in Hoboken's thematic catalogue derives from the old edition by Mandyczewski and presents several inconsistencies. In the event, no comprehensive chronology of the symphonies will ever be feasible, as on the one hand there are indeed some datable works (especially those which have come down to us in autograph score), but on the other hand there are many which can only be loosely assigned to a period of one to three years. Hence in Joseph Haydn Werke the datable and only vaguely datable works are presented in parallel volumes which overlap chronologically (for example, I/2 presents symphonies from about 1761 to 1765, while I/3 presents symphonies known to date precisely from the years 1761 to 1763).
It may also be illuminating to record which works will not be published in the complete edition, since one of the essential tasks of Haydn scholarship is to reach a clear distinction between authentic compositions and works that have falsely been attributed to Haydn. As is generally known, there are a lot of misattributions: almost two hundred symphonies, among them the infamous ‘Toy Symphony’, and even more masses, the string quartets ‘Opus 3’ (including the far too catchy ‘serenade’) and the ‘Feldparthien’, the divertimentos hII:41–46, from which Johannes Brahms chose the theme for his ‘Haydn Variations’. The omission of a work from the canon is regularly discussed in the critical report of the volume where it would find its place if it were authentic.
After the completion of the edition two further units will be added: a new edition of Haydn's correspondence (the one by Dénes Bartha, Joseph Haydn: Gesammelte Briefe und Aufzeichnungen (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1965), is incomplete and not up to contemporary philological standards) and a thematic catalogue – not to replace Hoboken's indispensable work entirely, but to correct his many mistakes, especially with regard to problems of authenticity. This will be our task for the next five years.
And last, but not least: from time to time we also will publish a new issue of our Haydn-Studien, the scholarly journal founded in 1965.
