On Apr 17, 2005, at 5:59 AM, RegoR wrote:
...as an instrumentalist, do you feel that it then becomes the duty of the copyist to satisify the needs of the performer and engrave the music using the clefs that are more comfortable for a performer to use?
In my experience, the vast majority of copyists regard it as their duty to literally copy exactly what they find in the score when extracting parts. There are many places where a composer changes clefs merely to save vertical space in the score, and you will never see those changes overridden by the copyist.
I think, frankly, that in the case of a dead composer (who cannot be consulted RE any proposed revision), that a bright line needs to be maintained between the functions of a copyist and those of an editor. And even w. living composers, the default should always be the exact transfer of score notation into the extracted part, unless a particular item warrants a query.
Also, do you feel that the full score should be engraved only in Treble and Bass Clefs, or should it be engraved to reflect the parts as they are written for the performer.
I believe that, transposition issues aside, the score should reflect exactly what the composer wants to appear in the parts--precisely because of the reason stated above. When I avoid tenor clef in a score, I avoid it in the parts as well.
If the latter, does this also mean that a score should be engraved TRANSPOSED, or should it be engraved as NON-transposed.
An interesting point, that has been too little discussed. In my own work I write transposed scores for pieces where details of instrumental writing are particularly important (special fingerings, e.g.), and concert scores where complex pitch issues prevail.
With a concert-pitch score, the copyist will need to exercise more initiative than usual in deciding clef change issues, because quite obviously instruments with big transpositions will have parts that lie entirely differently on the staff in the part than in the score.
An interesting example of this issue is raised by the Schoenberg wind quintet. The score, in concert pitch, just specifies "clarinet" without giving a key. Since the part descends to tenor d-flat, the extracted part was made for clarinet in A, though there is no hint that Schoenberg actually required that and the decision seems to have been the copyist's. Since my full-Boehm Bb clarinet has a low Eb key, I felt no compunction about using it for this piece instead, but I had to copy out the part a half-step up for me to play it.
Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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