On 28 Jun 2006 at 18:21, Noel Stoutenburg wrote: > John Howell wrote: > > I may not completely understand the flow of technological changes, > > which is why I ask this question. The "period when music was > > generated with handset type," to the best of my knowledge, was the > > 16th and early 17th centuries. > > A little off on the end; the last piece of music I have seen that was > handset was a choral publication by Novello in 1962. It was common up > until about 1950; just about all hymnals and music books produced were > set with handset type, and I have a violin piece (though not by > Paganini) in a volume published at the end of the 19th century, which > was printed from handset type.
I don't dispute your examples of typeset music, but they are *outliers* in terms of normal practice after the period John mentions. > > By Paganini's lifetime (1782-1840), was music not being printed > > from engraved copper plates? And real engraving, with a sharp > > steel implement, not punched? If so, anything that could be > > engraved could be placed on the printing plates. > > I understand punch engraving began to be used in the > mid-eighteenth century; I don't know enough about the history of > printing music to know when and where it was used, or under what > conditions. My main intent in my post was to point out that what we > see on the printed page may well represent the synthesis of the ideas > of a number of people, and unless on has access to the autograph copy > by the composer, may not represent only the composer's intentions. But typesetting had *nothing* to do with the choices made in engraved music, which was very similar to copying with pen and ink in terms of what the engraver could put on the page. Thus, your hypothesis that norms of typeset music may have caused the engraver of the Paganini to emit duplet indicators is simply completely implausible. By the time any Paganini work was published, engraving or lithography would have been the norm. The move to lithography greatly increased the similarity between creating printed editions and copying manuscripts (cf. the first edition of the score of Wagner's Tannhäuser, for example). -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
