On 31 May 2009 at 21:42, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: > >> At 12:39 AM -0400 5/31/09, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > >> >The old dot vs. stroke controversy c. 1800 has always struck me as an > >> >interesting example of engravers having to make decisions on which > >> >engraving tool to use when copying from a manuscript in which the > >> >staccatto marks could vary from a dot to a hasty dot that almost > >> >looks like a stroke, to strokes that are so small they look like > >> >dots, to regular strokes, and all the way to hasty strokes that are > >> >very large and sometimes lean and look like our modern tenuto marks. > >> > >> An excellent example, David. (And a potential doctoral dissertation > >> for someone, if I'm not mistaken!) > > > > It's already been done: > > > > Robert D. Riggs. "Articulation in Mozart's and Beethoven's Sonatas > > for Violin and Piano." Ph.D. Diss., Harvard, 1987. > > I know those symbols are a nightmare for me in Graupner, Telemann, and > Fasch's manuscripts. I try my best to put into my file what I see in > the original manuscript and make a note of it in the critical report. > I know these markings continued into the classical period, which I'm > finding in Wanhal / Cannabich / Ordonez manuscripts now.
Riggs's conclusions were very narrow, but a good demonstration of what you find when you actually look at the sources. My experience with printed sources from 1780-1820 is that for most of that period, there was no real distinction between the dot and stroke. A single work would have some parts that used dots exclusively, some parts that used strokes exclusively, and even sometimes other parts that mixed them. This is because most editions with parts were not engraved by a single person. For instance, a piano trio would probably have the piano part engraved by an engraver who specializes in keyboard parts, and the string parts engraved by a different engraver. I can tell by looking at the engraving how many engravers there were, simply because their engraving tools weren't always identical, and even when they were, there are patterns that fit together that allow you to distinguish two engravers whose tools are indistinguishable. Mostly it's about angle and placement, e.g., treble clefs tend to be angled differently by different engravers, and key signatures aligned differently. Likewise for the placement of dynamic marks. Anyway, my point is that one assumes that a single designer/editor created the stichvorlage (assuming they weren't engraving from a score), and would have been consistent in using dots and strokes. But the variation within a single publisher's engraving staff and within a single published edition is phenomenal. I do believe that there were likely local conventions, and, say, a Bohemian musician might interpret things differently than an Italian musician. But I don't have the research to back that up -- it's just a hunch. Our modern distinction between the two symbols is not something that I think was honored in performance, even though it's quite clear that the two symbols were used in engraving well back into the 18th century. -- 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
