John Howell wrote:
At 8:23 PM +0100 11/28/04, d. collins wrote:
Jari Williamsson écrit:
Isn't this only tradition? (Blank music paper use lines going all across the page.)
Probably only a tradition, and a fairly recent one; but I don't see why it would come from blank music paper. Many early editions, both in movable type and engraved, have staffs going across the page, but the music sometimes stops in the middle of the staff, the last part of which simply remains empty.
The fact is that today, if you happen to work for a "traditional" publisher, you will likely be considerd an unprofessional engraver if you don't fill up your lines and your pages.
That's probably true, but I'd be happier if both "traditional" and "non-traditional" publisher concerned themselves with the really important critera, like assuring good page turns.
Going right back to Petrucci's "Odhecaton" of 1501, the first publication of part-music using movable type and the triple-impression method, Dennis's observation is quite correct. In fact there are staves or pages of unfilled staff lines, suggesting that the printing of the staff lines was the first impression through the press.
The situation with blank staves in Petrucci prints is a bit more complex than that, and varies between different books...
But I digress. Remaining in a similar era, though, it's impossible to produce meaningful editions of e.g. Binchois songs while trying to fill whole lines. The suggestion that it's the 'only' tradition assumes we're all working in the mainstream.
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