On Nov 15, 2006, at 6:10 AM, Noel Stoutenburg wrote:
And if, in the collection, or the notes, the specified what changes they made in the original, as many scholarly editions do, then one can "back out" the editorial changes, and recreate the public domain original.
Are you comfortable backing out like that? I've thought about it and I've always hesitated.
Several years ago, a singer hired me to make a piano reduction of an aria from a lesser-known Haydn opera, so she could sing it in recital and auditions. The orchestra-score source she gave me was photocopied from that complete-Haydn volume. (I can't remember the title, but it's the Haydn equivalent of the NMA for Mozart.) The editorial markings are very clear and it was pretty obvious what the editor had done. Thinking ahead, I made a point of ignoring the extra notations and doing my arranging based on only the unbracketed stuff. (Admittedly, 90% of the bracketed stuff was elementary and pretty self-evident from the rest of the music.)
Since then, I've occasionally thought of publishing the arrangement -- just small-scale self-publishing -- but I've always held off because even though I'm 90% sure my only source is public domain material, it always bothered me that I never had an actual PD source in front of me so I can't really be sure what work has been done by the editors.
The opera (Orfeo) isn't THAT obscure, so I assume it must have been published long before that critical edition, but I don't actually know that for a fact. If I ever researched the history of it I have since forgotten. Does anyone here happen to know?
mdl _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
