Slur directions

[Christof Schardt]

In the score of a Graupner symphony the slurs between note pairs are placed very inconsistently and against the modern rules, which state: slur below if and only if all stems are pointing upwards.
Look at the pickup eighth-notes a in the example, leading to notes of pitches c, d, e or f , the pickup a with stem up, the second note all with stem down.
Even between identical intervals a-f the slur is set either upwards or downwards.
My opinion: ignore those meaningless choices and instead notate it modern and conistently. What do you guys think?

[John Ruggero]

To me, it looks like the composer couldn't make up his mind, at least at first. He tries following the rule you mentioned, doesn't like the look of it, and tries the reverse, seems to like that better. Tries it one more time in violin 2, compares it to violin 1, and decides to go with under slurs, which in a way look more natural to me.

But one would have to see the rest of the piece as well as be knowledgable about his standard practice. I looked through several of his works in manuscript at IMSLP and could only find one other example:

Graupner slurs.png (50.57 KiB) Viewed 866 times

But I am sure there are others. Finding them might provide insight into this question.

However, if you are modernizing the notation of everything else, there is no issue at all.

[NeeraWM]

Like every manuscript or autograph source, it should be taken with a grain of salt because we rarely have reliable info about the emotional status, the working condition, and the time constraint the composer or the copyist was finding himself into at the time.
If something doesn’t make sense, or is not coherent, and there is a modern rule that does, just switch to it with peace in your heart. If you really want to be a perfectionist, list every change in critical notes at the end of the edition, but honestly I’ve never seen slur direction being listed in there.