At 4:06 PM 05/29/03, David W. Fenton wrote: [answering me]
>> My main musical milieu is the community of opera singers. . . . > >OH, well, that explains a lot. > >*I* was talking about *musicians*. ;) LOL. If you think I'm going to dispute the implication, you're wrong. >Well, what's wrong with simply not obscuring your changes? Short of a whole lot of brackets or a whole lot of textual addenda, you can't have it both ways. Either you make a change or you don't. Let's take the question of beaming. As you probably know, the traditional style for vocal music for a long time was to break a beam for every syllable. Common practice today, even in reprints of classical work, is to beam the vocal part the same as you'd beam another instrument, but occasionally adding breaks for obviously contextual phrasing breaks (which is itself an editorial judgment, of course). I understand the argument for preserving the tradition, but on the whole I find the modern practice more readable (and in some cases, much more readable). For better or worse, that's my choice. So now the original beaming is part of the information that I have destroyed. OK. So how do I preserve it, short of writing out so many brackets that I may as well publish an entire appendix saying "this is how it was originally beamed"? It's just not practical to document everything. Sure, it can be done. (If nothing else, one can just attach a photocopy of the source.) But it's considerable extra work and extra verbiage for the sake of information that probably no one who is ever going to see my work cares about, and for a project that I do on my own time for little or no financial gain. >Why not a couple of notes listing what you've changed? For the >interested person, they can revert to the original if they find your >changes unconvincing. The vast number of performers will ignore the >notes, but for the person who *cares*, it will be very valuable. That's essentially what I do, though without going into minute detail. Frankly I think even that falls in the category of being excessive, but no one has ever accused me of being unduly concise in my writing. I seriously doubt that anyone who looks at my editions really cares if I (to name two genuine examples) changed a three-beam measured tremolo to two-beam because the former is unplayable on the piano at the appropriate tempo, or doubled the octave in the bass because a single note isn't loud enough on the piano to approximate what the orchestra sounds like there. As for the "vast number of performers" who will ignore the notes, I can only laugh. There are no vast numbers looking at my work. The "person who *cares*", assuming he or she exists at all, is welcome to send me an email and inquire. >How do you know the original was not in D and that you're not looking >at a transposition for this particular edition? Come to think of it, I don't. But that makes no difference to my editorial quandary. [quoting me again] >> I don't include editorial notes on the music itself, though I do generally >> offer a few lines of notes separately for those who care to look. In this >> case, I expect I would mention the key change. (My beaming practice is >> mentioned elsewhere as a general note for all my editions.) I certainly >> would not, however, list every instance where I switched a stem direction, >> changed the rhythmic spelling of a rest, cross-staffed a note, or fixed a >> typographical error. Anyone who cares about details like that is welcome >> to compare my page with the original for himself. > >I would say that is fine. Even critical editions don't do that. Oh, OK, in that case we have no significant disagreement here. I thought I sensed an insistence that every bit of information must be preserved, which for me is just not practical. mdl _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
