„Schwierige Lieder“ – volkssprachlich, binär, zweistimmig

The article provides an insight into the already known but not yet well documented work of Gustav Jacobsthalin Strasbourg in the second half of the 1870s, when he prepared the edition and commentary on theMondsee-Wiener-Lieder manuscript (A-Wn, Cod. 2856), but which he could not complete. The complicatedgenesis of this research and editorial project, for which he had joined forces with his friend, the GermanistWilhelm Scherer, and its ultimate failure are described. Furthermore, the interpretative approachesare explained which Jacobsthal had already achieved in terms of content, in addition to his annotated completecopy of the codex, and supported with quotations from the diplomatic transcription of Jacobsthal’snotes. Jacobsthal’s research methods and his preliminary results concern questions of the numbering of thesongs and the scribal hands, the rationale for emendations, the measurement of the beat and the relationshipbetween the metre of the language and musical rhythm. Jacobsthal’s views are compared and contrastedwith other attempts at editing and interpretation, undertaken at the same time and shortly thereafter byother researchers, and are selectively compared with perspectives on the current state of research.