By the eighteenth century, the business of music publishing in Europe had exploded. Europe had become more culturally international, and interest in purchasing and performing music written by foreign composers was in vogue. Unfortunately laws governing copyright and editing of music were either difficult to enforce or non-existent, and most were not applicable on an international level.
Around 1750 music publishers Leclerc and Boivin published an edition of flute sonatas in Paris. This edition was attributed to Georg Friderich Handel, whose work, at the time, was the most sought after in Western Europe. This particular collection is identical to an earlier edition published in 1729 in Hamburg, Germany by an unknown German composer, Johann Christoph Schultze.
This paper is the first modern critical edition of Schultze’s Six Sonate â Doi Flauti Traversi Senza Basso Con una Ciacconna tra mischiata di doi Canoni nella medesima nascosti (Six Sonatas for Two Flute without Basso and A Chaconne for Two Equal Voices in Canon) and marks the first time the Chaconne has appeared in modern notation. The edition aims to be as true as possible to the 1729 publication, notes standard performance practices, and answers the question as to why the 1750 edition may have been falsely attributed to Handel.