"From a copyist, composers generally [expect] their score to be copied exactly as they gave it, no more and no less."
i won't say where this came from other than to mention it is from a composer and was sent to an experienced and diligent copyist i know.
i know there are copyists that also feel this way, but i've always felt that the copyist's most important role is to improve the performers' relation with the music, which means in some cases slight editing and corrections (notational standards, obvious typos/errors etc.) and in others actually arguing points with the composer that you know to be true, because you have spoken to dozens upon dozens of composers, performers, copyists and musicologists and have gleaned and considered various perspectives on notation standards, tendencies, alterations etc. and have a braod understanding of what the norms are and when it is pertinent to break them and when it is not.
further, in my view -- as a composer and as a copyist -- the composer is not always the person who "knows best" about their scores exactly because of the fact that they have spent so many months on the composition that they cannot distance themselves from things that actually hinder a proper rendition of the score by a performer who has not spent the same kind of obsessive focus (tunnel vision?) on the score. (this is not a comment on performer disengagement, that is another discussion altogether).
but i'm just one measly copyist, what do the collective you think about all this? i'll start the list:
1. poor composer. 2. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
