Dear Stewart, > > It is the "falce and unperfect" aspect of modern editions, which > make me want to look at facsimiles. I want to get as close as > possible to the original text to learn as much as I can about the > music. It's an academic thing, I suppose.
It is also admirably professional, and that may be what lies behind a lot of the nastiness on this thread. The fact that one and the same piece may exist in several different versions and with several names is of vague academic interest to me, but I have other cats to whip, as they say rather picturesquely round here. At my end of the scale, hopelessly looking for pieces I can actually play and never finding the time to practice the ones I've got, the couple of facsimiles I do have are of a more plastic interest - I like looking at them. I'm not in the least interested in having something between a facsimile with that 'feel' and a retranscription, i.e. a photocopy, unless it seems 'free', like the Kapsberger PDF which came like a free gift in a cereal packet. At that same end of the scale, manuscripts would drive me mad. It took me ages to sort out the one page Willow Song that was floating around on the net, and it gave me great pleasure, but even five pages would be a chore for me. Put another way, and taking the gamut of the list which runs from the professional to the rank amateur, how people see the facsimile is going to be very different, and maybe it would not be a bad idea for the publishers (seeing as two of them are on the list) to explain their market (and I don't mean by this "justify their prices"). What a print run on the average facsimile is, who buys it, etc. From what Mr Reyermann said the cost of production must be extremely difficult to recuperate if the market is represented by lutelisters or even if it only represents a percentage of players, but this isn't really just a matter of profit. It would be of no interest to publish something that wouldn't be bought because the price was too high. I may not be prepared to pay that price for that object, but that simply proves that I am not part of the target public. > snip< Certainly the quality > varies from one publisher to the next. It seems ironic that Minkoff > editions, which are often the most expensive, often have no > editorial material, or at most a perfunctory list of contents. > Perhaps they make up for that deficit by reproducing so much music. > I have a facsimile edition of some baroque music published by > Schott, much of which I can hardly read at all. Boethius facsimiles, > on the other hand, are very legible, and have extremely useful > editorial material - concordances, information on dating, > watermarks, etc. Editions Ophee have useful information supplied by > the editors too, and the quality of the paper is excellent. Perhaps perversely, I think I would want a facsimile to be just that, with nothing else added. Good paper, yes, and as clear a print as the original allows, but nothing esle in the volume itself. I've got what I find a nice idea which could have been done better in a Marin Marais suite. A modern edition with a realisation of the figured bass, and in it are tucked the two facsimiles. > > The Welde facsimile is not yet ready to be published, but we are > well on the way. My wish is that people should be able to read every > note in the facsimile, including the notes which are now invisible, > and so we propose including in the introduction detailed information > about illegible passages. I don't know if this has ever been done > before, at least to the extent we propose doing. Aha! a sort of 'time machine facsimile' - I bet you're enjoying doing it. Yours, Tony > > For those who are unaware of the significance of your question about > Diego Cantalupi's pdf of Kapsberger III, I should explain that his > recent CD of music from Kapsberger's _Terzo Libro_ contains a > facsimile of the music, which you can read on your computer screen. > I imagine one's attitude to copyright would be no different for this > unusual CD than for any other. > > Best wishes, > > Stewart McCoy. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Tony Chalkley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "Lutelist" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 1:25 PM > Subject: falce and unperfect > > > > Just as an aside, where does Diego Cantalupi's pdf of Kapsberger > III fit in? > > > > Unlike Stewart, I wouldn't want a lot of facsimiles, as the ones I > have or > > have had I find difficult to read (I think this comes out in the > practical > > reproduction difficulties both with Welde and with Tree editions), > not to > > mention a bit falce and unperfect. I therefore need to transcribe > them, > > hopefully without error... > > > > Tony > > >
