date:20060215


Kim Patrick Clow wrote:

[snip]
I am just curious why is it the profit model is ok for publishers, or 
orchestras,
or record labels, or video productions, or the record chains, that make 
profits

from music that's in the public domain is somehow OK. But when an editor
makes his case in court (and wins), he's seen as the Antichrist for 
doing it?



[snip]

Not by me -- if some people can make money from the recording, then 
others who had a hand in making the music available for the recording 
should also be able to make money from it.


After all, they didn't have to use his edition, did they?  They could 
have hired some work-for-hire scholar to prepare the music for recording 
in an edition that Hyperion then would control the rights to.






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Re: [Finale] Font issues


Chuck Israels wrote:


Hello all,

I just got off the phone with Bill Duncan - trying to resolve font  
issues in Finale - without much success.


Here are some of the problems:

Bill's new articulation font symbols disappear when they are moved  from 
their default locations in a score (by nudging, for instance)  until I 
force a screen redraw.  The handles remain visible, but the  shape 
disappears making fine adjustments difficult.


Bill thinks that this is a result of conflicting font types, so we  
removed all but the PS and bmap fonts, but that only made Finale not  
see the correct symbols.  The correct symbols only appear when the  
TrueType fonts are installed.  In Bill's system (FinMac 2006 OS-X, I  
don't know which version), things are working correctly with only the  
PS and bmap fonts installed - no TrueType.


Then there are a number of other kinds of font issues - long list of  
fonts appearing in Finale, even when some of those fonts have been  
removed from the root level font library.  How is that happening?


This is driving me a little crazy.  Can anyone shed light on this?



I'm certainly not a Mac expert, but that last paragraph makes me think 
that there must be a cache somewhere which wasn't refreshed when you 
removed those fonts from the root level font library.  some list 
somewhere must have been made at some time, which Finale is referring 
to.  Is there some way to flush such caches or refresh such lists? 
Maybe if that is done, the other issue will clear up.


Just a thought from someone whose total mac exposure is reading posts on 
this list, so take it for what it's worth (probably nothing.)



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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights


On 15.02.2006 David W. Fenton wrote:
Sawkins didn't deserve performance royalties. No musicologist acting 
as an editor as Sawkins was deserves performance royalties.



David,

that may perhaps be your personal opinion, but it is certainly not what 
the law is in Europe.


Johannes
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http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de

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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q


Mark D Lew wrote:


On Feb 14, 2006, at 11:52 AM, David W. Fenton wrote:


Well, let me say that anything other than ppp to fff is ridiculous --
there's no possible way to actually make such gradations in any
meaningful sense. Anything beyond that range is voodoo notation, in
my opinion.



I wish I had the proper quote, but I recall reading about how Verdi, 
when asked about the pp marking in the Requiem and ppp in 
Otello, remarked that all he really wanted was pianissimo, but the 
singers didn't take notice if he just wrote pp or ppp, so he kept 
adding p's to get the point across.




I've read similar information concerning Tchaikovsky.  Personally I've 
never even understood the difference between pp and ppp.


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Re: [Finale] engraving time


Brennon Bortz wrote:


I am slowly but surely building my own base of clients and have come across
this same question, but with more emphasis on just how much should be
charged.  I have found that I have made some irresponsible business
decisions in agreeing to a preset budget that turns out to be quite a bit
less than if I were to charge an hourly rate.  Would everyone agree that
$40/hour is reasonable/standard?

Going further, would anyone suggest a per frame rate that might be
acceptable?  I understand that some frames are much more complicated than
others, and I've even heard of some people charging a per/frame/layer rate.
How about a per item rate based on the Count Items plugin?  Any other
methods of pricing that people have found most useful?

As a note, I realize that some of these methods are much more easily
calculable AFTER the music has been entered in Finale.  What would people
suggest is the best way to make these pricing decisions when glancing at a
MS?  I work mostly with handwritten manuscripts...



I feel $40/hour is a reasonable rate, but that depends on where you live 
-- $40/hour in NYC is probably not a livable wage, while $40/hour in 
rural South Carolina may allow you to live in luxury.


The nature of the music, not whether it's 
manuscript/previously-engraved, is what I find to be most important. 
Longer note values with very little articulations and expressions can be 
brought to a professional engraving appearance with far less effort than 
music with at least one articulation per note, lots of expressions, 
lyrics, tempo changes, meter changes, etc.


What I do is ask for 3 sample pages, the first, the last and one random 
page from the middle of the work, then I enter them (I realize that's my 
own time, but it is also a head-start, should the client accept my 
terms) and calculate the per-page time spent.  Then I multiply that by 
the total number of pages of the original and factor in extracted parts, 
etc. and present the client with what ends up being a fairly accurate 
quote.  I also leave myself an out that before I will sign the contract, 
I need to see the entire manuscript so that I will feel comfortable that 
the pages sent to me are truly representative of the entire project.


I don't think it matters if you're doing it on a per-frame basis (that's 
certainly easy enough to calculate even before you enter it into Finale) 
makes a difference on the final quote, just make sure you've looked at 
all the frames so that you're acquainted with the most comlex of them.


Pricing on a per-item basis seems too nit-picky for me, and were I a 
client I wouldn't hire someone who charges using that method.


I'm sure others will chime in with their thoughts on this issue.

--
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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q




David W. Fenton wrote:



Well, let me say that anything other than ppp to fff is ridiculous --
there's no possible way to actually make such gradations in any 
meaningful sense. Anything beyond that range is voodoo notation, in 
my opinion.




What on earth is 'voodoo notation'?  Because according to your logic, 
it's something Beethoven was quite happy with.  Are you really saying 
there's only eight possible dynamic levels, at all, ever?

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RE: [Finale] 8th = Q

2006-02-15 Thread Williams, Jim

[RANT]
I believe that it was Gardner Read who raked Swedish composer Bo Nilsson over 
the coals several times for--among other things--indicating the same kind of 
ultra-fine gradations of dynamics.  In this case:
1. It is doubtful that the composer could hear such gradations and that even 
the most skilled performer could produce them (every note was assigned a 
dynamic from 0.5 to 10.0 in 0.5 increments, thus 20 gradations) AND
 
2. He wrote this rubbish for an instrument utterly incapable of producing such 
fine gradation.
 
While David labels it voodoo notation, I'd agree and also call it spurious 
accuracy or, perhaps better, I'm a more sensitive and intellectual composer 
than you are because I'm so beyond ppp to fff that I can create 20 dynamic 
gradations. Look at MEE!!!
 
I'll look later and post a few more of Nilsson's absurdities that Read brought 
to light.
 
[/RANT]
 
Jim W.



From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Owain Sutton
Sent: Wed 15-Feb-06 6:33
To: finale@shsu.edu
Subject: Re: [Finale] 8th = Q





David W. Fenton wrote:


 Well, let me say that anything other than ppp to fff is ridiculous --
 there's no possible way to actually make such gradations in any
 meaningful sense. Anything beyond that range is voodoo notation, in
 my opinion.


What on earth is 'voodoo notation'?  Because according to your logic,
it's something Beethoven was quite happy with.  Are you really saying
there's only eight possible dynamic levels, at all, ever?
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Re: [Finale] engraving time

2006-02-15 Thread Christopher Smith



On Feb 15, 2006, at 6:25 AM, dhbailey wrote:

I don't think it matters if you're doing it on a per-frame basis 
(that's certainly easy enough to calculate even before you enter it 
into Finale) makes a difference on the final quote, just make sure 
you've looked at all the frames so that you're acquainted with the 
most comlex of them.


Pricing on a per-item basis seems too nit-picky for me, and were I a 
client I wouldn't hire someone who charges using that method.


I'm sure others will chime in with their thoughts on this issue.


I sure will! 8-)

I find that most clients don't want to know how you calculate it; they 
just want to know how much it will cost them. As a result, I work out 
frame rates and guesstimate hours, and I think about how the final 
product will be used (my usual quick and dirty one-live-performance, or 
something that will stay in the library for a while, or for publication 
(rarely in my case)) and from all that I cobble together a fixed price 
and give it to them to be accepted or refused.


Sometimes I screw myself (only lightly these days, as I am getting 
better at pricing), sometimes I come out ahead, but mostly I am 
somewhere in the ballpark.


Some clients need to be told the Golden Triangle Rule, which is an 
excellent principle for contractors of all types:


Good, Fast, and Cheap. Pick any two.

Good and fast won't be cheap, fast and cheap won't be good, while cheap 
and good won't be fast, because I will do it when I have nothing better 
to do.


Christopher

(BTW, Dennis Collins, from what I have seen of your work, 45 minutes 
per page for that quality of output is terrific! You are working in a 
domain where I don't find myself very often, so maybe I am unduly 
impressed, but I am impressed just the same. At an hourly rate of $40, 
you would charge about $30 per page, which is a bargain for the 
quality, IMHO.)


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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q




Williams, Jim wrote:

[RANT]
I believe that it was Gardner Read who raked Swedish composer Bo Nilsson over 
the coals several times for--among other things--indicating the same kind of 
ultra-fine gradations of dynamics.  In this case:
1. It is doubtful that the composer could hear such gradations and that even 
the most skilled performer could produce them (every note was assigned a 
dynamic from 0.5 to 10.0 in 0.5 increments, thus 20 gradations) AND
 
2. He wrote this rubbish for an instrument utterly incapable of producing such fine gradation.
 
While David labels it voodoo notation, I'd agree and also call it spurious accuracy or, perhaps better, I'm a more sensitive and intellectual composer than you are because I'm so beyond ppp to fff that I can create 20 dynamic gradations. Look at MEE!!!
 
I'll look later and post a few more of Nilsson's absurdities that Read brought to light.
 
[/RANT]
 
Jim W.




Spurious analogy.  We're not talking about some abstract decimalised 
invented system, but the use of '', '' and beyond.  I've got no 
problem as a performer from using these (a) as a different set of 
subdivisions than 'fff-ppp' would involve, or depending on context (b) 
representing extremes of volume beyond that normally expected by 
three-letter indications.

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[Finale] Extracting parts in the least painful way (with novacaine please ; )

2006-02-15 Thread Kim Patrick Clow

When I do scores in Finale, I tend to change the default settings.
Some of this is because I like roomy layouts and wide margins.

My issue is when I go to extract parts, everything requires tweaking though. Finale
puts the header in a particular spot for example for scores and parts. But my method,
I rather have it elsewhere.

Is there anyway I can streamline the process? Or should I just be resigned to having
to do a lot of tweaking?

Thanks in advance for suggestions.-- Kim Patrick ClowThere's really only two types of music: good and bad. ~ Rossini
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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q

2006-02-15 Thread Christopher Smith



On Feb 15, 2006, at 6:33 AM, Owain Sutton wrote:




David W. Fenton wrote:


Well, let me say that anything other than ppp to fff is ridiculous --
there's no possible way to actually make such gradations in any 
meaningful sense. Anything beyond that range is voodoo notation, in 
my opinion.


What on earth is 'voodoo notation'?  Because according to your logic, 
it's something Beethoven was quite happy with.  Are you really saying 
there's only eight possible dynamic levels, at all, ever?




I know what David is talking about, though I wouldn't necessarily call 
it voodoo notation.


Dynamics, as much as we composers might wish otherwise, are not exact, 
unless you are using computers for playback, in which case 127 MIDI 
gradations aren't even enough.


Dynamics are not even just volume of sound, like decibels are, as much 
as we composers might wish otherwise. They are also indications of 
intensity of timbre, and a change of inflection and note shape. They 
can only influence actual balance in the grossest terms, so there isn't 
much point in indicating anything beyond eight levels or so, unless you 
are making a psychological point to the performer (imagine what goes 
through the trombone section's collective mind when they see 
Tchaikovsky's F. Whaah-hoo! Of course they can't really play five 
F's. Likewise Mozart's FF is nowhere close to a modern FF, and even 
Bruckner's FFF has to be played like a large MF if you hope to last 
through the whole work with both lips intact, not to mention the 
audience's ears. And I won't even attempt to compare jazz dynamics with 
classical.)


So the best one can do is to plunk down your best guess at a marking 
and hope that the performers are good enough musicians and sensitive 
enough to their colleagues to play it musically and balanced. And if 
making some odd marking (Satie is full of them!) makes your performer 
think differently when you need them to, all the more power to ya, but 
be prepared to be misinterpreted.


Christopher

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Re: [Finale] engraving time

At 10:52 PM 2/14/06 -0800, you wrote:
Would everyone agree that
$40/hour is reasonable/standard?

I charge $75/hour (and am about to raise that), but I do almost only new
music from manuscript. It involves editorial decisions and often the
creation of new font elements (had to create 'real' Roman numerals
recently, with the connected serifs), finding technical errors and ordinary
mistakes, and solving presentation problems the composer didn't always take
into account. I figured that since I get $100/hour to write technical
articles on RFID, I should get the same for some *real* intellectual
effort. :)  And since I can produce the material fairly quickly, that
$75/hour is a bargain. $40/hour is 1990s wages.

Dennis



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Re: [Finale] engraving time

You can adjust the price per item (between 0,025 and 0,045 eurocents) to 
compensate for complex pages. (Remember that Donemus pays this price to 
their engravers. They have their own overhead costs that go on top of 
their rate.) That's what I do and it works fine.


dc wrote:


First of all, thanks to the list-members who commented on this issue.

The per-item pricing was mentioned here because at least one publisher 
(Donemus) is known to use it. I find that it reflects rather well the 
complexity of the music and the data content of the page. What it 
doesn't take into account is the variable amount of time spent tweaking 
the layout of the music (for page turns, for instance, or other 
aesthetical considerations), the slurs, the grace notes, the text 
underlay, etc., etc.. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by 
nit-picky applied to it. It probably is nevertheless one of the 
fairest ways of pricing.


It would be interesting, considering your own method of pricing, to know 
how closely the number of items reflects the time you spend on your 
sample pages.


Which in turn leads to a fairly simple plug-in request (but are there 
any plug-in developers left here?): improving the Count items plug-in 
so it would

1) give the total
2) copy the results to the clipboard (for pasting in a spreadsheet).

Dennis
P.S. Of all the music I've ever done (Renaissance to Classical), the 
most time-consuming was probably Couperin, because of the very numerous 
grace notes that don't space well at all in Finale and the complicated 
continuo figurings (and their line extensions).






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Re: [Finale] Extracting parts in the least painful way (with novacaine please ; )


Kim Patrick Clow wrote:

When I do scores in Finale, I tend to change the default settings.
Some of this is because I like roomy layouts and wide margins.

My issue is when I go to extract parts, everything requires tweaking 
though. Finale
puts the header in a particular spot for example for scores and parts. 
But my method,

I rather have it elsewhere.

Is there anyway I can streamline the process? Or should I just be 
resigned to having

to do a lot of tweaking?

Thanks in advance for suggestions.



Set up a basic score of more than one staff per system.  You don't need 
many measures.


Set your margins the way you want.

Go to the Extract Parts dialog and extract a part -- set the positions 
for header, set margins, system spacing, etc.


Save your score as a template.

I think you'll find that your extract parts settings will be retained 
the next time you use that template for a new project.


--
David H. Bailey
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Re: [Finale] engraving time


dc wrote:


Barbara Touburg écrit:

You can adjust the price per item (between 0,025 and 0,045 eurocents) 
to compensate for complex pages. (Remember that Donemus pays this 
price to their engravers. They have their own overhead costs that go 
on top of their rate.) That's what I do and it works fine.



Thanks for reminding me of this. I do think that this adjustable price 
per item is a rather reasonable idea.




As long as it's clear to the client why you're charging .045 eurocents 
for THIS staccato dot but only .025 eurocents for THAT staccato dot. 
I'm not sure many clients would understand the difference.


--
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Re: [Finale] engraving time

At 03:41 PM 2/15/06 +0100, dc wrote:
Barbara Touburg écrit:
You can adjust the price per item (between 0,025 and 0,045 eurocents) to 
compensate for complex pages. (Remember that Donemus pays this price to 
their engravers. They have their own overhead costs that go on top of 
their rate.) That's what I do and it works fine.

Thanks for reminding me of this. I do think that this adjustable price per 
item is a rather reasonable idea.

I think it depends on the kind of music. In the first appearance of a piece
of music, especially one with complicated temporal events, uncommon or new
elements, low stylistic precedent, etc., the per-item price would end up
being minimum wage. I did a 4-page solo piece for which I received close to
$600 (from a happy customer) because the size and placement of a relatively
few elements was precise, and the piece went back and forth for editorial
examination for several dozen times over 18 months.

Dennis (the other)



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Re: [Finale] engraving time


On 15.02.2006 dc wrote:

Barbara Touburg écrit:

You can adjust the price per item (between 0,025 and 0,045 eurocents) to 
compensate for complex pages. (Remember that Donemus pays this price to their 
engravers. They have their own overhead costs that go on top of their rate.) 
That's what I do and it works fine.


Thanks for reminding me of this. I do think that this adjustable price per item 
is a rather reasonable idea.


The only problem with this can be very wide layouts and music spacing, 
which I am sometimes required to do (although I don't like them much 
myself). That makes very few items per page, but still quite a lot of 
adjustments (especially staff spacing, which is still non-automatic).


Johannes
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http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de

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Re: [Finale] engraving time


Of course I meant for te whole piece! Not for each individual item!
When a piece of music is relatively straightforward, I charge less than 
when a piece is complex or when it has lots of notes per page, or lots 
of accidentals and so on.


dhbailey wrote:

As long as it's clear to the client why you're charging .045 eurocents 
for THIS staccato dot but only .025 eurocents for THAT staccato dot. I'm 
not sure many clients would understand the difference.





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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights

2006-02-15 Thread John Howell


At 8:15 AM +0100 2/15/06, Johannes Gebauer wrote:


The point is that a critical edition can receive royalties.


Actually that isn't quite true under U.S. law, and I suspect (but 
certainly do not know) that the same might hold true for EU law.


A *copyrighted* edition can receive royalties.  It does not have to 
be critical (i.e. a complete scholarly study).  It can simply be a 
performing edition.  (That is happening yearly in the U.S. as the 
marches and other works by John Phillip Sousa come into the public 
domain, and some idiot obtained a new copyright on Gershwin's 
Rhapsody in Blue simply by putting back in the measures that 
Gershwin himself had cut out!  I can't wait for the fights to break 
out over the new edition of Porgy  Bess that incorporates the 
changes Gershwin made AFTER the score had been published.)


The point is that in order to earn a new copyright, the editorial 
work must be sufficient in and of itself to be considered 
copyrightable intellectual property, since once in the public domain 
the original music may never be recopyrighted (at least under U.S. 
law).  In the Sawkins case, that seems to be the point of contention: 
what did he do that constitutes copyrightable new intellectual 
property.


John


--
John  Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411  Fax (540) 231-5034
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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights



On Feb 14, 2006, at 3:03 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:


The musicological endeavor by definition is *not* compositional. The
editor of an edition is BY DEFINITION a slave to the original
composer's intentions.


As a composer, I would certainly like it if this were so, but it very 
plainly is not. Editions are  prepared all the time for reasons 
irrelevant to or even in direct opposition to the composer's intent. 
Simplified versions. Cut or excerpted versions. Modernized versions. 
Speculative reconstructions. I could go on and on. The line between 
editing and arrangement is an extremely blurry one, and in US copyright 
law it is not and as far as I know never has been drawn.



Finding that this act is worthy of performance royalties will have
only one result: fewer new editions will be prepared for recordings,
or the editions will be prepared by performers instead of scholars.
Or, the recordings won't happen at all if a performance royalty must
be paid to the editor.

The Hyperion decision is a Pyrrhic victory that will ultimately be a
disaster for recording companies, performing groups and editors.



The US experience simply does not bear that out. That edited versions 
of old music are entitled to performance and mechanical royalties is 
long established here (as, e.g., when Hildegarde Press about 10 years 
ago successfully sued recording companies that used its editions of 
Hildegarde  von Bingen w.o credit or compensation) and has put no crimp 
in performance or recording.


The notion that composers and scholars should be good socialists while  
everybody else has  their hand out is deeply ingrained in the classical 
community--but that don't make it right.


Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/

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Re: [Finale] TAN: another German question



On Feb 14, 2006, at 5:53 PM, Johannes Gebauer wrote:


If anything the German is just as ambiguous as the translation


OK. Thanks for your help!

Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/

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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights

On 15.02.2006 John Howell wrote:

The point is that a critical edition can receive royalties.

Actually that isn't quite true under U.S. law, and I suspect (but certainly do
not know) that the same might hold true for EU law.

I thought we had already agreed that European law is not the same as US
law in this respect.

A *copyrighted* edition can receive royalties. It does not have to be critical (i.e. a complete scholarly
study). It can simply be a performing edition. (That is happening yearly in the U.S. as the marches and other
works by John Phillip Sousa come into the public domain, and some idiot obtained a new copyright on Gershwin's
Rhapsody in Blue simply by putting back in the measures that Gershwin himself had cut out! I can't
wait for the fights to break out over the new edition of Porgy Bess that
incorporates the changes Gershwin made AFTER the score had been published.)

The situation is definitely more complicated than that in Germany. A
performing edition can only receive royalties, if it is more than just
fingerings, ie if it qualifies as an arrangement of some sort, or if it
is the very first edition of the work (including any print in the pieces
history, even a printed edition from 1500, or in special cases a widely
available manuscript will count as the first edition). A critical
edition _can_ receive royalties anyway, as there are _special_
regulations. However, in practice I believe this is rarely the case,
because for most pieces where the critical edition qualification has any
impact there exist older editions, which are not even under normal
copyright any longer.

Why do you think Gardiner made his own performing edition for the Bach
cantatas? I am convinced the reason was _not_ that NBA was not accurate
enough (this may perhaps be the case for some cantatas, but is complete
nonsense for others), but that the recording company would have had to
pay a substancial amount in royalties to NBA. It worked out cheaper to
get some cheap musicologists hired and prepare a performing edition.
And for the uninformed it added some marketing hype, as well. Gardiner
is such a responsible scholar, he even had his own edition prepared for
the cantatas, correcting all the mistakes in the existing editions.
Bach like he has never been performed before. Not.

I have taken part in many recordings where either we had to play from
ancient, out-of-copyright parts, or where a performing edition was
especially prepared. All because of royalties to the publishers/editors.

It is also true that sometimes recordings are not being made, when the
company finds out how much the royalties would be to the editor. I
certainly know of one particular instance where this happened (in the
UK, btw), and it is a sad case. But such is the law.

Johannes
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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q



On Feb 15, 2006, at 6:17 AM, dhbailey wrote:
I've read similar information concerning Tchaikovsky.  Personally I've 
never even understood the difference between pp and ppp.




For me,  pp is the softest you can reliably play on, say, the piano. 
ppp is the softest clearly audible note in whatever space you're 
playing in. Big difference!


Similarly, ff is the loudest note of most acoustic instruments, fff for 
the brass, most percussion, and a few others.  can be acheived on 
large tamtams and amplified instruments, but is not often to be 
inflicted on defenseless audiences.


Historically, the dynamics filter has gotten finer and finer over time. 
At first there were just p and f. The rest were gradually added in the 
order ff, pp, mf, fff, mp, ppp. At  each stage, the difference betw. 
adjacent levels got narrower. I basically agree with David Fenton that 
more than 8 or 9 different levels are impossible for the ear to 
distinguish.


Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/

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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q



On Feb 15, 2006, at 8:59 AM, Owain Sutton wrote:

 the use of '', '' and beyond.  I've got no problem as a 
performer from using these ... representing extremes of volume beyond 
that normally expected by three-letter indications.




The problem is what is normally expected. In the common practice 
period, 6 levels is standard, and some instruments (double reeds, top 
and bottom of the flute, etc.) cannot normally even achieve that many. 
Writing an fff for bassoon is just ridiculous: many top professionals 
will simply give you a forte, and new-music types like me (who don't 
care about blasting to get maximum loudness) will give you a plain 
fortissimo. An  --or a  for that matter, would simply be a 
waste of ink. Tchaikovsky once wrote a p for a bassoon solo, and 
the result is that half the time it is played on a bass clarinet--which 
he certainly didn't want.


A word to the wise.

Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/

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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q

At 11:18 AM 2/15/06 -0500, Andrew Stiller wrote:
I basically agree with David Fenton that 
more than 8 or 9 different levels are impossible for the ear to 
distinguish.

That can't be true. The very notion of shaping a line has to do with
changing its dynamics slightly. Sometimes other coloristic factors are
involved, but a simple volume-shaped sample is enough to demonstrate that
we can indeed hear these relative differences. Conductors and performers
contour lines and adjust balances all the time, in part because the
composers make the assumption that they will and so notate only the
critical moments.

You point out that the difference between adjacent levels has become
narrower, and that's true. Did this mean that differences in level could
not be heard before, that the players were not capable of it, or that the
instruments were not able to produce the distinctions?

The question is rhetorical. Whatever the case in the past, the truth today
is that the very presence of controllable multiple levels of volume on the
majority of music we hear (which is electroacoustic music) provides a
standard for performance emulation.

What I'm getting at is this: We can choose to call for many subtle levels
of volume, and expect them to be attended to, now or someday. As composers,
we know some instruments have limited ranges and cannot achieve the louds
or the softs, and write with that understanding. But the interior levels
are available if we choose to ask for them.

However Read berates the decimal volume levels of Nilsson, the composer was
far more forward-looking than Read. Read was writing this 40 years ago, but
his vision was limited. Today, it is 100% possible to pre-program a device
like a MalletKat to these levels as the performer proceeds through a piece,
in which case those markings make perfect sense and the music is glorious
for it.

Further, then, the transition from listening and practicing in order to
develop these subtleties is encouraged and challenged by the ease with
which such pre-programmed acoustic/electronic hybrids or demo versions of
compositions can reveal the importance of them. You get no artistic growth
by accommodating the resistance of those trained in methods of the past. In
the case of volume levels, it's not an issue of inherent inability, but
rather the translation of actual longstanding practice (adjustment of
balance) into the score notation (detailed volume levels). Depending on
which side of the page you're one, one seems natural, the other tyrannical,
or vice versa.

One can always argue, as David Fenton does (and I apologize for the
summary), that the real world requires adjustment of many scored elements
anyway, or as you do, that instruments themselves have limitations. But the
presence of scored elements indicates meaning and intention. If you are a
composer's advocate, as I am, you believe that the composer's concept is by
its very nature the correct one, and what appears in a score is not a
suggestion, it is the goal. That goal may include finer dynamic levels, a
choice of tuning systems, extensions to the instruments or their abilities,
or neural implants for performers to help them along.

To be unable to meet that goal does not speak to the accomplished
composer's failing, nor even to the performer's failing, but to a
performance practice circumstance that has not yet grown into the
composer's imagination.

Dennis



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[Finale] Contrabass and clefs

I'm working on a piece for cello and harp. The cello part is going to be 
played on a contrabass. At which pitches should I switch clefs? Which clefs?


Barbara

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Re: [Finale] Contrabass and clefs

2006-02-15 Thread Carolyn Bremer

Basses prefer tenor clef, and only above the staff. It's hard for us
(not much practice) to read tenor clef in the staff, so switch back to
bass. Above a high C or D, I'd consider treble clef, though tenor gets
used up there, too.

-Carolyn



On 2/15/06, Barbara Touburg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I'm working on a piece for cello and harp. The cello part is going to be
 played on a contrabass. At which pitches should I switch clefs? Which clefs?

 Barbara

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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q

2006-02-15 Thread Mariposa Symphony Orchestra




Point well taken re: Tchaikovsky, but I've 
usuallyfelt the reason for the bass-clar substitution for the bassoon solo 
(I'm guessing you reference the end-of-exposition sec of the first movement of 
the 'Pathetique' - clarinet solo descending and then picked up for the final 
four notes of the line by bassoon - pp) is one of 
timbre asmuch as volume.I find 
that substitution a little uncomfortable; Tchaikovsky knew exactly whathe 
was doing - the movement begins with that bassoon solo and there's a nice bit of 
closure to the section by ending it with a (brief) bassoon 
exposure.If he had wanted the smooth continuation of 
clarinet timbre he would have written it. I really don't think 
Tchaikovsky was looking for a discernable px6 distinctly audible from a px5 or 
any other volume delineation; I think he was simply saying"HEY! Give 
me the softest, quietest, nearly inaudible sound you can 
produce!" I think it was his way of saying ABSOLUTELY the 
quietest of quietest.

Timp, strings and clarinet in the preceding 
bars go (variously) from ppp  
p  pppthrough 
 to p to the 
bassoon's final pp. His 
way of writing in one very detailed but subtle decresendo plus 
possibile. If my bad French is 
appropriate.

But then, my opinion and nothing 
more.

Best,

Les

Les MarsdenFounding Music Director and 
Conductor, The Mariposa Symphony OrchestraMusic and Mariposa? 
Ah, Paradise!!!http://arts-mariposa.org/symphony.htmlhttp://www.sierratel.com/mcf/nprc/mso.htmhttp://www.geocities.com/~jbenz/lesbio.html 





  - Original Message - 
  From: 
  Andrew 
  Stiller 
  To: finale@shsu.edu 
  Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 8:28 
  AM
  Subject: Re: [Finale] 8th = Q
  On Feb 15, 2006, at 8:59 AM, Owain Sutton 
  wrote: the use of '', '' and beyond. I've got 
  no problem as a  performer from using these ... representing extremes 
  of volume beyond  that normally expected by three-letter 
  indications.The problem is what is "normally expected." In the 
  common practice period, 6 levels is standard, and some instruments (double 
  reeds, top and bottom of the flute, etc.) cannot normally even achieve 
  that many. Writing an fff for bassoon is just ridiculous: many top 
  professionals will simply give you a forte, and new-music types like me 
  (who don't care about blasting to get maximum loudness) will give you a 
  plain fortissimo. An  --or a  for that matter, would simply be a 
  waste of ink. Tchaikovsky once wrote a p for a bassoon solo, and 
  the result is that half the time it is played on a bass clarinet--which 
  he certainly didn't want.A word to the wise.Andrew 
  StillerKallisti Music Presshttp://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/___Finale 
  mailing listFinale@shsu.eduhttp://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
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[Finale] Re: FFFFF

2006-02-15 Thread SteveSTCC

Speaking as a trombone player, I can report that (more in years past, not so 
much these days) the trombone section's collective mind, seeing F, often 
includes:
1) Let the games begin!
2) Are we aiming directly enough at the viola section?
3) Looks like I won't have to clean out the instrument this week
4) Trumpets? We don't need no stinkin' trumpets...
etc etc
Of course the flip side of this, doesn't the section recognize the P 
symbol?... of course: it ends up being as TACET...

In a message dated 2/15/06 1:01:25 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 From: Christopher Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [Finale] 8th = Q
Dynamics are not even just volume of sound, like decibels are, as much as we 
composers might wish otherwise. They are also indications of intensity of 
timbre... imagine what goes through the trombone section's collective mind when 
they see Tchaikovsky's F. Whaah-hoo! Of course they can't really play five 
F's. 

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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q

2006-02-15 Thread Phil Daley


At 2/15/2006 01:12 PM, Mariposa Symphony Orchestra wrote:
 
Point well taken re: Tchaikovsky,
but I've usually felt the reason for the bass-clar substitution for the
bassoon solo (I'm guessing you reference the end-of-exposition sec of the
first movement of the 'Pathetique' - clarinet solo descending and then
picked up for the final four notes of the line by bassoon -
pp) is one of timbre as much as
volume. I find that substitution a little
uncomfortable; Tchaikovsky knew exactly what he was doing - the movement
begins with that bassoon solo and there's a nice bit of closure to the
section by ending it with a (brief) bassoon exposure.
If he had wanted the smooth continuation of clarinet timbre he would have
written it. I really don't think Tchaikovsky was
looking for a discernable px6 distinctly audible from a px5 or any other
volume delineation; I think he was simply saying HEY! Give me
the softest, quietest, nearly inaudible sound you can
produce! I think it was his way of saying
ABSOLUTELY the quietest of quietest. 
Point taken, but as a professional bass clarinet player (a while ago) ppp
was the least you were going to get
I agree with David, voodoo dynamics.


Phil Daley 
AutoDesk 
http://www.conknet.com/~p_daley




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Re: [Finale] Contrabass and clefs

2006-02-15 Thread Carolyn Bremer

There are many names for the bass of the strings. Bass Viol (but
usually that's the violone, or the real, fretted 6-string viol),
Double Bass, String Bass, Contrabass, or Bass. I may be missing one or
two...

-Carolyn



On 2/15/06, Phil Daley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 At 2/15/2006 01:08 PM, Barbara Touburg wrote:

  I'm working on a piece for cello and harp. The cello part is going to be
  played on a contrabass. At which pitches should I switch clefs? Which clefs?

 Showing my ignorance:

 I am wondering what a contrabass is?

 Is there a contrabass-violin?

 My mother played cello, so I don't think there is a contrabass-cello.

 I know absolutely nothing about harps, so perhaps there is a contrabass-harp?

 I do know about contrabass clarinets, I have bought and played one.

 I think there might be a contrabass sax, or maybe bassoon.

 You peaked my curiosity.

 Phil Daley   AutoDesk 
 http://www.conknet.com/~p_daley



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Re: [Finale] Contrabass and clefs

2006-02-15 Thread Carolyn Bremer

I'd like to put in an alternate opinion to John's. There is a lot of
bass music in treble clef, and they're comfortable reading it if they
have the chops to play that high.

Reading bass clef up to G and A (three ledger lines) is very common
for intricate passages. If there is an occasional note in the passage
higher than that, you can stay in bass. If the passage's tessitura is
above an A, I'd go to tenor.

As a bass player who has played a wide variety of music, I find it is
preferable to make more clef changes than you might otherwise think in
order to avoid putting tenor clef notes in the staff. The literature
does not give bass players much reason to learn tenor clef in the
staff, and so few do. But Barbara, if you know who will play the
piece, the best solution is to ask that player.

-Carolyn


On 2/15/06, John Howell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 At 7:08 PM +0100 2/15/06, Barbara Touburg wrote:
 I'm working on a piece for cello and harp. The cello part is going
 to be played on a contrabass. At which pitches should I switch
 clefs? Which clefs?
 
 Barbara

 If you're writing for cello, notate for cello.  Involving bass is
 irrelevant.  I would switch to tenor clef at about middle C, BUT only
 if the following passage lies in the octave above middle C
 consistently.  The one thing NOT to do is to switch back and forth in
 the course of a passage.  Drives the player nuts, unless there's a
 really good reason for it like dropping consistently down to random
 bass notes, but NOT just to avoid ledger lines.   I would avoid
 treble clef unless there's good reason to use it.

 John


 --
 John  Susie Howell
 Virginia Tech Department of Music
 Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
 Vox (540) 231-8411  Fax (540) 231-5034
 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
 http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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Re: [Finale] Contrabass and clefs


On 15.02.2006 Phil Daley wrote:

I am wondering what a contrabass is?


A Double Bass. In German Kontrabass.

Johannes
--
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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q

On 14 Feb 2006 at 21:56, Mark D Lew wrote:

 On Feb 14, 2006, at 11:52 AM, David W. Fenton wrote:
 
  Well, let me say that anything other than ppp to fff is ridiculous
  -- there's no possible way to actually make such gradations in any
  meaningful sense. Anything beyond that range is voodoo notation, in
  my opinion.
 
 I wish I had the proper quote, but I recall reading about how Verdi,
 when asked about the pp marking in the Requiem and ppp in
 Otello, remarked that all he really wanted was pianissimo, but the
 singers didn't take notice if he just wrote pp or ppp, so he kept
 adding p's to get the point across.

That's exactly the kind of thing I mean by voodoo notation -- 
writing something different that what you want, thinking that somehow 
it's going to get you the right result whereas writing literally what 
you want won't do that.

How is a performer supposed to know the difference?

Actually, I guess as long as  and p and pp all mean the 
same thing (as soft as possible), it's not such a bad thing. But if 
someone wrote something like:

 subito p

I'd consider it to be absolute insanity.

Indeed, I have a passage in one of my own compositions where a piano 
passage crescendos to a subito pp, and I'm not certain I think that's 
good notation or not. I guess if I specified the end point of the 
crescendo it might be something more like p cresc. mp  subito pp 
but I'm not sure I feel any more comfortable with that.

Somehow, we got along with no dynamic markings at all in notated 
music for centuries, and then we managed with f and p (and their 
equivalents) for a shorter (but still fairly long) period. I'm not 
sure that the multiplication of gradations has really accomplished 
anything in terms of actual subtleties of performance, given the non-
specificity of the markings and the importance of context.

-- 
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q

On 15 Feb 2006 at 11:33, Owain Sutton wrote:

 David W. Fenton wrote:
 
  Well, let me say that anything other than ppp to fff is ridiculous
  -- there's no possible way to actually make such gradations in any
  meaningful sense. Anything beyond that range is voodoo notation, in
  my opinion.
 
 What on earth is 'voodoo notation'?  Because according to your logic,
 it's something Beethoven was quite happy with. . . .

Beethoven is not God.

 . . . Are you really saying
 there's only eight possible dynamic levels, at all, ever?

Absolutely not. There's an infinite number of dynamic gradations. But 
there's no way to actually notate them all, so proliferating the 
dynamic markings at the extremes really doesn't accomplish anything 
useful, in my opinion, except of the voodoo variety, as exhibited 
in the Verdi example that Mark offered.

-- 
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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Re: [Finale] Contrabass and clefs

2006-02-15 Thread Phil Daley


Thank you.

I am not that familiar with orchestras.

The only time I played with one was in Carmina Burana as the Eb Clarinet 
player, mostly because I owned an Eb clarinet ;-)



At 2/15/2006 02:14 PM, Johannes Gebauer wrote:

On 15.02.2006 Phil Daley wrote:
 I am wondering what a contrabass is?

A Double Bass. In German Kontrabass.

Phil Daley   AutoDesk 
http://www.conknet.com/~p_daley



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Re: [Finale] Contrabass and clefs

Thanks for your explanation, Carolyn. Very clear. I will fowllow your 
advice. Unfortunately, I can't ask the contrabass player (double bass!), 
because I work for the  harp player. Your guidelines are very clear, so 
I think I'll manage. Thanks everyone!


Barbara

Carolyn Bremer wrote:

I'd like to put in an alternate opinion to John's. There is a lot of
bass music in treble clef, and they're comfortable reading it if they
have the chops to play that high.

Reading bass clef up to G and A (three ledger lines) is very common
for intricate passages. If there is an occasional note in the passage
higher than that, you can stay in bass. If the passage's tessitura is
above an A, I'd go to tenor.

As a bass player who has played a wide variety of music, I find it is
preferable to make more clef changes than you might otherwise think in
order to avoid putting tenor clef notes in the staff. The literature
does not give bass players much reason to learn tenor clef in the
staff, and so few do. But Barbara, if you know who will play the
piece, the best solution is to ask that player.

-Carolyn


On 2/15/06, John Howell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


At 7:08 PM +0100 2/15/06, Barbara Touburg wrote:


I'm working on a piece for cello and harp. The cello part is going
to be played on a contrabass. At which pitches should I switch
clefs? Which clefs?

Barbara


If you're writing for cello, notate for cello.  Involving bass is
irrelevant.  I would switch to tenor clef at about middle C, BUT only
if the following passage lies in the octave above middle C
consistently.  The one thing NOT to do is to switch back and forth in
the course of a passage.  Drives the player nuts, unless there's a
really good reason for it like dropping consistently down to random
bass notes, but NOT just to avoid ledger lines.   I would avoid
treble clef unless there's good reason to use it.

John


--
John  Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411  Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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Re: [Finale] Contrabass and clefs

2006-02-15 Thread Robert Patterson

A more interesting question for clefs with CB is whether to continue to notate 
them 8vb below sounding pitch. This can be a quite difficult choice. A note 
that has excessive leger lines in 8vb bass clef can be too low in at-pitch 
tenor or treble.

My understanding is that professional bass players can routinely read 8vb bass, 
8vb tenor, and at-pitch treble.  I'm not as sure about at-pitch tenor. In any 
case, any clef change probably requires a notation as to whether it is 8vb or 
at pitch.




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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q




David W. Fenton wrote:

That's exactly the kind of thing I mean by voodoo notation -- 
writing something different that what you want, thinking that somehow 
it's going to get you the right result whereas writing literally what 
you want won't do that.


How is a performer supposed to know the difference?

Actually, I guess as long as  and p and pp all mean the 
same thing (as soft as possible), it's not such a bad thing. But if 
someone wrote something like:


 subito p

I'd consider it to be absolute insanity.



You make some worthwhile arguments, even if they're not something I 
agree with - it's a shame you have to use hyperbolic comments alongside 
them.

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Re: [Finale] Contrabass and clefs

That is an interesting remark. My client, the harpist, insisted that the 
music shouldn't be transposed up an octave and I was wondering why. I 
didn't know that bass players read both transposed (8vb) and sounding 
(c) (or how does one say that).



Robert Patterson wrote:

A more interesting question for clefs with CB is whether to continue to notate 
them 8vb below sounding pitch. This can be a quite difficult choice. A note 
that has excessive leger lines in 8vb bass clef can be too low in at-pitch 
tenor or treble.

My understanding is that professional bass players can routinely read 8vb bass, 
8vb tenor, and at-pitch treble.  I'm not as sure about at-pitch tenor. In any 
case, any clef change probably requires a notation as to whether it is 8vb or 
at pitch.




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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q

At 02:15 PM 2/15/06 -0500, David W. Fenton wrote:
There's an infinite number of dynamic gradations. But 
there's no way to actually notate them all, so proliferating the 
dynamic markings at the extremes really doesn't accomplish anything 
useful, in my opinion, except of the voodoo variety

Saying 'no way' doesn't alter the fact that gradations are getting finer
without any voodoo whatsoever. We're increasingly clarifying the
interpretation on the page itself, and in our recordings. An infinite
number is still a few years away...

Seriously, there are documentated ways of notating fine gradations of
dynamics. They include the fully relative groups (such as the standard
dozen through the +/- systems and the 20-level decimals and notehead sizes)
and the absolute-relative groups (such as SPL, Midi volume, and NRPN codes)
and the absolute groups (such as dB, RMS pressure, and dynes/sq.cm.).

The desire to notate or otherwise fix more subtle gradations increases as
music moves out of its past into its future. That's how it's been, and
there's no reason that it will stop as we continue to educate our senses
and develop tools to identify what we have learned. 

And there are documented performances, real and virtual, successful and
not. Failure exists only so long as something can't be done. Once success
is achieved, then there is yet another ladder of professionalism added,
just as multiphonics are now commonplace in the instrumental vocabulary.

Anybody who's ever sat at a mixing board for hours knows how subtle these
levels can be, and how they can be achieved with a combination of attentive
performers, acoustic balance and mixing skill.

Whether dynamic gradations are more relative than absolute are notational
and performance choices, and whether these interact with coloristic
tendencies or group dynamics just makes them part of the whole. I think you
and Lee and others and I all agree on that.

Nevertheless, fine gradations are present and accounted for, and moreover,
have meaning and usefulness and musicality.

You know, there was a lot of music written in the 20th century that
couldn't be played well, if at all. Younger performers are coming along in
this century laying waste to that idea. Music that once sounded awkward and
crude and full of errors is now tight and elegant and nearly flawless.
Hearing it is a joy.

Tell me that there's a class of performers who can't play refined dynamics
and tell me that there's a class of composers who aren't interested in them
and tell me there's a class of  directors who couldn't distinguish an mf
from a 6.0 from a 64, and I'll heartily agree with you. But refinement
exists and continues. 'Tain't voodoo.

Dennis



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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights

2006-02-15 Thread Kim Patrick Clow

Ton Koopman when he was performing the Mozart Symphonies (complete cycle that alas was not ever recorded on CD or DVD) in Japan many years ago, mentioned in the notes, that he was unable to order copies of the NMA. They had to resort to finding copies in libaries and Xeroxing them. I wonder if he still paid the fees to Barenreiter? ;)

On 2/15/06, Johannes Gebauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On 15.02.2006 John Howell wrote: The point is that a critical edition can receive royalties.
Actually that isn't quite true under U.S. law, and I suspect (but certainly do not know) that the same might hold true for EU law.I thought we had already agreed that European law is not the same as US
law in this respect. A *copyrighted* edition can receive royalties.It does not have to be critical (i.e. a complete scholarly study).It can simply be a performing edition.(That is happening yearly in the
U.S. as the marches and other works by John Phillip Sousa come into the public domain, and some idiot obtained a new copyright on Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue simply by putting back in the measures that Gershwin himself had cut out!I can't wait for the fights to break out over the new edition of Porgy Bess that incorporates the changes Gershwin made AFTER the score had been published.)
The situation is definitely more complicated than that in Germany. Aperforming edition can only receive royalties, if it is more than justfingerings, ie if it qualifies as an arrangement of some sort, or if it
is the very first edition of the work (including any print in the pieceshistory, even a printed edition from 1500, or in special cases a widelyavailable manuscript will count as the first edition). A critical
edition _can_ receive royalties anyway, as there are _special_regulations. However, in practice I believe this is rarely the case,because for most pieces where the critical edition qualification has anyimpact there exist older editions, which are not even under normal
copyright any longer.Why do you think Gardiner made his own performing edition for the Bachcantatas? I am convinced the reason was _not_ that NBA was not accurateenough (this may perhaps be the case for some cantatas, but is complete
nonsense for others), but that the recording company would have had topay a substancial amount in royalties to NBA. It worked out cheaper toget some cheap musicologists hired and prepare a performing edition.
And for the uninformed it added some marketing hype, as well. Gardineris such a responsible scholar, he even had his own edition prepared forthe cantatas, correcting all the mistakes in the existing editions.
Bach like he has never been performed before. Not.I have taken part in many recordings where either we had to play fromancient, out-of-copyright parts, or where a performing edition wasespecially prepared. All because of royalties to the publishers/editors.
It is also true that sometimes recordings are not being made, when thecompany finds out how much the royalties would be to the editor. Icertainly know of one particular instance where this happened (in the
UK, btw), and it is a sad case. But such is the law.Johannes--http://www.musikmanufaktur.comhttp://www.camerata-berolinensis.de
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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights

On 15 Feb 2006 at 8:15, Johannes Gebauer wrote:

 On 15.02.2006 David W. Fenton wrote:
  The issue of published critical editions is not involved --
  Sawkins made a private edition for the use of the performing group
  that Hyperion was recording.
 
 I really am not an expert on the law side of all this, but in which
 way is Sawkins edition so clearly not a critical one? . . .

I expect that it was basically a critical edition. The distinction I
was trying to make was between an edition prepared for an individual
and an edition published in a large-scale critical edition, like the
NBA or NMA, for instance. The cost basis for these productions is
completely different, so I would expect the fees involved for using
the editions to be completely different.

 . . . I don't think
 the law differentiates between private or public in this matter. And
 from that point of view the court decision may be in line with
 European law, and could have been similar in any other European
 country.

Sawkins was compensated for the use of his printed edition by being
paid an editing fee.

 The point is that a critical edition can receive royalties. A one
 off fee may not be enough. In that sense Sawkins may only have sued
 them for something which he is indeed guaranteed by law, and which
 he would have been guaranteed by law in any other EU member state.

I think it's quite obviously the case that what he was asking for was 
*not* guaranteed him by law. If it had been then there would have 
been no point in Hyperion's disputing it. My understand is that the 
judgment in this case has *changed* the law in this regard, by re- 
interpreting it to include the kind of work Sawkins did in the group 
of people who are entitled to performance royalties.  

 For those interested and reading German, here is the web page with
 the relevant information:
 
 http://www.vg-musikedition.de/
 
 They also keep a list of music, for which they deal with perfomance
 rights. Interestingly, NBA does not seem to be part of it (perhaps
 they simply haven't bothered?). But the Beethoven complete edition,
 Haydn complete edition etc.

Performance rights are not the same thing as performance royalties. 
You might pay a flat fee for the rights to record an edition, but my 
understanding is that performance royalties on recordings are paid 
proportional to the number of copies sold. My understanding was the 
the editing fee paid to Sawkins entitled Hyperion to record using his 
edition, and that Sawkins was asking for something more than the 
usual edition hire fee.

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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights

On 15 Feb 2006 at 8:19, Johannes Gebauer wrote:

 On 15.02.2006 David W. Fenton wrote:
  2. the legal reasoning behind the decision is specious. Sawkins
  cannot be both a musicological editor and a co-composer of the
  works, 
 
 Of course he can: I am working on a piece where the middle parts are
 missing. They need to be recomposed. (Not by me though, but by the
 editor).

Recomposed or reconstructed?

Sawkins constructed one viola part in one piece, and supplied figures
to an incompletely figured bass in another case. He also supplied
corrections of erroneous notes.

Reconstructing multiple missing parts does, in fact, seem to me like
recomposing.

But reconstructing a single inner part and supplying figures for a 
bass line seem to me to not be composing at all, because the choices 
are very highly circumscribed, and in the case of the figured bass, 
not in any way creative (you need only look at the harmonies in the 
other parts to decide the exact figures, and very frequently, missing 
figures were understood in context without needing to be figured at 
all; adding figures to the bass line is no more composing than 
adding roman numerals on a harmonic analysis exercise for a  theory 
class). The case even considered a different edition of the piece 
with the reconstructed viola part and observed that the two 
reconstructed parts were identical in almost all respects. But rather 
than concluding the obvious (that this was natural, since both 
editors were acting in service of de Lalande's original inspiration), 
the judge instead took the very few differences between the two 
reconstructed parts as evidence of compositional creativity and 
declared that the half dozen or so different notes entitled Sawkins 
to be considered as de facto co-composer of the work.  

If the editor's goal is to reconstruct the composer's original, how
can the editor be anything but the slave of the original composer?

The case of reconstructing several missing parts is quite different,
though, especially in Baroque music where the outer voices might be
missing. 

With a viola part in an orchestral and choral work with continuo,
there really isn't any composing going on at all, seems to me.

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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights

On 15 Feb 2006 at 11:59, Johannes Gebauer wrote:

 On 15.02.2006 David W. Fenton wrote:
  Sawkins didn't deserve performance royalties. No musicologist
  acting as an editor as Sawkins was deserves performance royalties.
 
 that may perhaps be your personal opinion, but it is certainly not
 what the law is in Europe.

Perhaps I'm using the wrong term. 

Sawkins was paid a fee for the use of his edition.

What he sued for was royalties form the recording based on the 
assertion that the original contributions he made in his edition were
similar to those of a composer, who would automatically receive
royalties from the recordings.

This is quite different.

Hyperion was not trying to cheat Sawkins of compensation for his work
or for the use of his edition -- they paid him for that.

Sawkins wanted more than that.

And, he got it -- unfortunately in my opinion.

I don't know the exact magnitude of the royalty he demanded, but it 
means that Hyperion has to sell more copies of this recording in 
order to break even, or they have to pay less to the other parties 
involved in it.  

One of the incentives for recording early music is that the music is 
public domain and that one doesn't have to pay for rights or pay 
royalties to the composer. One may pay fees to the owners of the 
editions used, but that's not the same thing as the kinds of fees 
that non-public domain projects require.  

This decision basically takes all such editions out of the public
domain, for purposes of recording royalties, and adds a cost to the
business model of recording companies that put out lots of early
music. The result will be either more expensive recordings or fewer
recordings, or the elimination of anything unusual from the catalogs
of these labels that do so much to record early music.

And it's based on a musicologically fraudulent claim -- Sawkins was
not the composer. All his actions in editing the work were in slavish
service of de Lalande's original intentions.

In short, Sawkins is collecting de Lalande's royalties.

And that's just WRONG.

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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q

On 15 Feb 2006 at 10:12, Mariposa Symphony Orchestra wrote:

 I really don't think Tchaikovsky was looking
 for a discernable px6 distinctly audible from a px5 or any other
 volume delineation; I think he was simply saying HEY!  Give me the
 softest, quietest, nearly inaudible sound you can produce!I
 think it was his way of saying ABSOLUTELY the quietest of quietest.

This is what I consider voodoo dynamics. 

The reason I use the term voodoo is because the stereotypical 
example of voodoo is sticking pins in a doll that represents a person
in order to hurt the person the doll represents. That practice
represents a belief that doing one thing will cause something to
happen that is different and operates on a different object.

The Tchaikovsky example, like the Verdi one, is a case of writing 
something that is probably impossible in order to have a 
psychological effect that gets you something other than what is 
literally written.  

To me, that's sticking pins in a doll to make it play really softly.

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but if you stuck the pin in the 
person you were trying to harm, you *know* for a fact that they'd 
feel it. Likewise, if you want someone to play as softly as possible, 
just write as softly as possible. 

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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights

On 15 Feb 2006 at 8:25, Johannes Gebauer wrote:

 On 15.02.2006 David W. Fenton wrote:
  Sawkins has broken the code of scholarship, in my estimation. He's
  transgressed the ground rules of the musical economy. He may have
  badly broken the system in doing so -- a valuable record label may
  go under entirely because of his actions. Others may have to scale
  back their production as a result of Hyperion's failed defense of
  the present system.
 
 What you are saying is, the record companies can make lots of money,

What evidence do you have that record companies like Hyperion that 
record early music are making lots of money? I strongly doubt it -- 
they don't sell enough recordings to be rolling in dough. Hyperion 
has 12 employees (or had them at the time the appeals court found in 
Sawkins's favor) -- that doesn't exactly sound like a huge rich media 
company to me. It sounds like a small business, one that we know was 
operating on relatively small margins, margins that may not be large 
enough to compensate the editors with performance royalties.  

 partly from your work as musicologist, but musicologists (that
 includes me) have to do that work for nothing. . . .

How many times does this have to be repeated? Sawkins was PAID a fee
for his EDITION. It may not have been a very big fee, but he wasn't
providing his edition for nothing -- he was compensated for it.

 . . . In my opinion that's
 ridiculous. In fact, the more I think about it the more I think that
 Sawkins has a point.

Your argument here makes sense only if Hyperion had no intention of 
paying Sawkins anything at all. Sawkins had already been paid his 
editing fee (my memory is that it was £1,300 or so, clearly not a 
very high hourly rate, but still probably a decent portion of the 
recording project's budget) for his work.  

The choice for Sawkins was not between having his work used for no
compensation and suing, the choice was between having his work used
for an agreed-upon editing fee and suing for more money than the
original agreed-upon fee.

 It is not as though the money he was asking for came from his
 publisher. So your point about if you asked for more money it
 wouldn't get published is completely irrelevant. Hyperion obviously
 needed Sawkins work to do the recording. . . .

I am very annoyed when people engage in discussions like this without
having acquainted themselves with the facts. Sawkins was compensated
for his edition with an editing fee. Sawkins asked for something
beyond the usual and customary fee -- he asked for performance
royalties on the grounds that his editing constituted a contribution
to the work that was substantially original. His contributions were
*not* original at all -- they were completely circumscribed in almost
all details by the framework of de Lalande's composition.

 . . . They should then keep to the law in
 compensating him. . . .

They did.

Sawkins sued for something to which the law did *not* entitle him, as 
it had been previously interpreted. The decision that was handed down 
has changed the interpretation of that law so that now editors get 
editing fees *and* performance royalties (though it's not clear to me 
if this means that all editors can now demand performance royalties, 
or if it only applies to editors who've reconstructed or recomposed 
parts of the work; I actually don't have a problem with a case of 
real recomposing, where there is not enough of the original work in 
the sources to clearly circumscribe the reconstruction of the lost 
part; I would certainly allow someone who finished the Mozart Requiem 
to get performance royalties).  

 . . . If that includes royalties, . . .

Before this lawsuit, it did not.

. . . then I am all for it,
 for the benefit of the editor, because otherwise the editor will
 always be the greatest loser in the chain of music publishing.

Does it change your mind to know the *fact* that Sawkins *was* 
actually compensated for the use of his edition, before the lawsuite
was even filed?

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David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/


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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights

On 15 Feb 2006 at 10:32, John Howell wrote:

 The point is that in order to earn a new copyright, the editorial
 work must be sufficient in and of itself to be considered
 copyrightable intellectual property, since once in the public domain
 the original music may never be recopyrighted (at least under U.S.
 law).  In the Sawkins case, that seems to be the point of
 contention: what did he do that constitutes copyrightable new
 intellectual property.

No, that issue is completely orthogonal to the Sawkins/Hyperion 
dispute.

No one disputed Sawkins copyright in his edition. Hyperion paid him 
an editing fee for the use of his edition.  

The dispute is whether the edition he created constitutes the 
equivalent of a newly composed work from the standpoint of whether or
not the editor should be paid recording royalties.

For instance, it seems clear to me that someone who turns his hand to
writing a new completion Mozart's Requiem has a clear claim to co-
authorship, and recording and performance royalties. Likewise with a
completion of Mahler's 10th.

But Sawkins's contributions to his editions of de Lalande were orders 
of magnitude less significant than either of those cases. He made no 
choices about instrumentation, no choices about voicing, he added no 
new material nor new measures to the work. All he did was reconstruct 
an inner part (viola) in one piece and supply figures in the figured 
bass where there were none in the original (and there probably didn't 
need to be, but even if there did, there's nothing creative in 
looking at the string and voice parts and deciding what figures 
belong in the figured bass) and in correcting certain obvious 
erroneous notes. He also collated readings from multiple sources into 
his performing edition. He also realized the figured bass, but since 
the organist for the recording used his own realization and not 
Sawkins's, this was not found by the judge to qualify for royalties.  


These activities of Sawkins are the bread and butter of the editor of
critical editions. While it takes a certain level of cleverness and
knowledge to do these things well, and certainly has its creative
aspects, the results are not original contributions to the work, but
simply reconstructions of what was in the original, imperfect 
sources.

And he was already compensated for making his edition, which is more
than can be said for an awful lot of editors.

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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights

On 15 Feb 2006 at 10:35, Andrew Stiller wrote:

 On Feb 14, 2006, at 3:03 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
 
  The musicological endeavor by definition is *not* compositional.
  The editor of an edition is BY DEFINITION a slave to the original
  composer's intentions.
 
 As a composer, I would certainly like it if this were so, but it
 very plainly is not. Editions are  prepared all the time for reasons
 irrelevant to or even in direct opposition to the composer's intent.
 Simplified versions. Cut or excerpted versions. Modernized versions.
 Speculative reconstructions. . . .

Except for the latter, these are not musicological editions.

And the latter, as in the case of, say, a reconstruction of Mahler's
10th, should be deserving of the recording royalties, in my opinion.

But what Sawkins was doing was the purely musicological type of 
edition where you're trying to reconstruct the best text from 
imperfect sources, in an effort to recover the original intention of
the composer.

 . . . I could go on and on. The line between
 editing and arrangement is an extremely blurry one, and in US
 copyright law it is not and as far as I know never has been drawn.

It may be as a general issue. But in the case of Sawkins's editions, 
as outlined in detail in the judgment from the original case (I can't 
find the appeal decision), it's quite clear that Sawkins was not 
doing anything creative or original at all.  

  Finding that this act is worthy of performance royalties will have
  only one result: fewer new editions will be prepared for
  recordings, or the editions will be prepared by performers instead
  of scholars. Or, the recordings won't happen at all if a
  performance royalty must be paid to the editor.
 
  The Hyperion decision is a Pyrrhic victory that will ultimately be
  a disaster for recording companies, performing groups and editors.
 
 The US experience simply does not bear that out. That edited
 versions of old music are entitled to performance and mechanical
 royalties is long established here (as, e.g., when Hildegarde Press
 about 10 years ago successfully sued recording companies that used
 its editions of Hildegarde  von Bingen w.o credit or compensation)
 and has put no crimp in performance or recording.

For the gazillionth time, Sawkins was paid a fee for the use of his
edition.

 The notion that composers and scholars should be good socialists
 while
  everybody else has  their hand out is deeply ingrained in the
 classical community--but that don't make it right.

He was compensated for his editorial work in an amount that was 
within the realm of the customary and usual fees for use of an 
edition (indeed, I'd say he was fairly well compensated in comparison
to a lot of editors who never get one red cent).

The issue here is not about copyright in his edition, or performance
rights for his edition.

It's whether or not the construction of the edition included 
sufficient original material to justify paying him royalties on the
recording. His work in editing was *not* original -- it was almost
entirely circumscribed by the existing materials composed by de
Lalande.

If de Lalande were alive, he'd deserve the royalties that Sawkins is 
getting. That's the crucial difference that it seems to me most of 
you who are commenting in this thread are completely missing -- that 
this is not about Sawkins edition, but about the concept of 
authorship and how its defined as related to the payment of recording 
royalties.  

Sawkins has gotten himself a judgment that de facto declares him co-
composer of de Lalande's works. While I can conceive of musicological
reconstructive work that would merit that determination, the work
described in the judicial decision clearly doesn't come close to
meriting that at all.

Read the decision and decide for yourself whether or not the judge's
reasoning is musicologically specious or not:

http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/judgmentsfiles/j2636/sawkins-v-
hyperion.htm

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[Finale] Duplicate Postings

I apologize if you've seen my voluminous postings twice today. I 
encountered an email problem earlier in the afternoon and couldn't 
tell if the post had gone through to the list or not (they appeared 
to have gone, but I never got them the list).

My apologies if they are duplicated -- I'm sure you're sick enough of 
all my posts without having to see them twice! :)

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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights

On 15 Feb 2006 at 17:14, Johannes Gebauer wrote:

 It is also true that sometimes recordings are not being made, when
 the company finds out how much the royalties would be to the editor.
 I certainly know of one particular instance where this happened (in
 the UK, btw), and it is a sad case. But such is the law.

Sawkins as paid this fee by Hyperion.

But he was asking to be paid more still for his work.

Now, if you know that projects are not being recording because of
editing fees, don't you think that adding in performance royalties to
editors is going to cause even more projects to be abandoned?

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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights


On 15.02.2006 David W. Fenton wrote:
One of the incentives for recording early music is that the music is 
public domain and that one doesn't have to pay for rights or pay 
royalties to the composer. One may pay fees to the owners of the 
editions used, but that's not the same thing as the kinds of fees 
that non-public domain projects require.  



In Europe the law does actually guarantee royalties to editors of, in 
particular, critical editions. It makes no difference whether the music 
is in the public domain, since what is to be compensated is not the 
composition itself, but the work which the editor invested in it. I 
realize that you think this work should be done as a sort of social 
donation, but personally I sympathize with the editors.


If the recording label doesn't want to pay royalties they can always go 
and find the original print or ms themselves. They may still get into 
trouble if no printed edition other than the one which demands royalties 
exists, since it is almost 100% sure that the publisher (or even the 
individual) holds the publication license, which also grants royalties, 
and can even prevent recordings or performances. This is actually a 
great thing for us performers, because when we find a previously 
unpublished piece of music, we can secure the performance and 
publication rights for us, and take our time doing the work without 
fearing that someone else might beat us at it. This has just recently 
been relevant again, with the recently discovered, previously unknown, 
aria by Bach. You cannot stage a performance or recording of this piece 
at this time - at least in Europe, because the library, who owns the 
publication and performance rights for the next few years, has decided 
that Gardiner will record it (? at least if I remember correctly).


Imagine you find Beethoven's 10th symphony. You want to bring out the 
first edition of it, conduct the first performance, and make the first 
CD. It's your lottery tickey. But it requires some investment and time. 
Without protection someone with more resources will undoubtedly beat you 
at it. Leaving you nothing. Under German (and I assume European law) you 
can get protection by securing the rights for, I believe, 2 or 3 years.



Johannes
--
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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights


On 15.02.2006 David W. Fenton wrote:

It is also true that sometimes recordings are not being made, when
 the company finds out how much the royalties would be to the editor.
 I certainly know of one particular instance where this happened (in
 the UK, btw), and it is a sad case. But such is the law.


Sawkins as paid this fee by Hyperion.


Yes, a fee, but not the royalties. There is a difference.


But he was asking to be paid more still for his work.

Now, if you know that projects are not being recording because of
editing fees, don't you think that adding in performance royalties to
editors is going to cause even more projects to be abandoned?



Yes, that is what I said. It's sad for the recording side of things. 
It's good for the critical edition side of things. Who has got more money?


Actually, the recording side of things it hardly going to suffer, since 
there are so many loopholes to take. All of which Hyperion obviously 
missed. But it does mean that if someone really does find Beethoven's 
10th symphony, and publishes it, the labels recording it will have to 
pay the editor, too, and that, imo, is a very good thing.


Johannes
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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q




David W. Fenton wrote:



My point is about how the notation indicates instructions to the
performers. In that regard, I don't think that the dynamic markings
beyond ppp and fff have any reliable interpretation that makes any
sense.

If, for instance, a passage is at ppp and you want to get softer, I
think I'd just write softer and if even more is needed, softer
still. These are clearly relative dynamic indications, without the
stepped gradations implied by adding p's to the dynamic indication.



I fail to see how this necessarily has an end result any different to 
'voodoo dynamics' (which is beginning to scream 'band name' at me...)


I think that's my problem with  and p. It's just not clear to 
me that there can be any difference between the two except in a 
context, and there is no rationally definable difference (in the 
mathematical sense of the word rational, not the logical sense) 
between the two.


Unlike the clear and rational difference between 'softer' and 'softer 
still'?

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[Finale] oslash

2006-02-15 Thread John Bell


Finmac 2006c:

Using Palatino, when I enter an o or an O followed by a forward  
slash, I get an oslash (o with a diagonal line through it). I don't  
know whether this happens with any other fonts.


John
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Re: [Finale] 8th = Q

On 15 Feb 2006 at 15:53, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:

 At 02:15 PM 2/15/06 -0500, David W. Fenton wrote:
 There's an infinite number of dynamic gradations. But 
 there's no way to actually notate them all, so proliferating the
 dynamic markings at the extremes really doesn't accomplish anything
 useful, in my opinion, except of the voodoo variety
 
 Saying 'no way' doesn't alter the fact that gradations are getting
 finer without any voodoo whatsoever. We're increasingly clarifying the
 interpretation on the page itself, and in our recordings. An infinite
 number is still a few years away...
 
 Seriously, there are documentated ways of notating fine gradations of
 dynamics. They include the fully relative groups (such as the standard
 dozen through the +/- systems and the 20-level decimals and notehead
 sizes) and the absolute-relative groups (such as SPL, Midi volume, and
 NRPN codes) and the absolute groups (such as dB, RMS pressure, and
 dynes/sq.cm.).

You could be as specific in your notation as you like and still not 
get a predictable or reliable result from performers.

 The desire to notate or otherwise fix more subtle gradations increases
 as music moves out of its past into its future. That's how it's been,
 and there's no reason that it will stop as we continue to educate our
 senses and develop tools to identify what we have learned. 

Ah, yes, the concept of musical progress.

That's been a great success in the last century, eh?

 And there are documented performances, real and virtual, successful
 and not. Failure exists only so long as something can't be done. Once
 success is achieved, then there is yet another ladder of
 professionalism added, just as multiphonics are now commonplace in the
 instrumental vocabulary.
 
 Anybody who's ever sat at a mixing board for hours knows how subtle
 these levels can be, and how they can be achieved with a combination
 of attentive performers, acoustic balance and mixing skill.

Well, I think we're talking past each other here. I said that there 
were other ways to notate dynamics, but the extension of the 
traditional dynamic markings was not a very clear way to do it. The 
problem is in the notation, not in the capability of performers nor 
in our ability to perceive the differences.

But if you're writing for a mixing board, then it's entirely a 
different ballgame.

I was only speaking about live performance, which I consider to be 
the main point of composing. That's a prejudice of my own, but I 
thought I'd made that pretty clear by saying that the making of 
recordings allows the adjustments of balances that may not have been 
satisfactory in a particular performance.

 Whether dynamic gradations are more relative than absolute are
 notational and performance choices, and whether these interact with
 coloristic tendencies or group dynamics just makes them part of the
 whole. I think you and Lee and others and I all agree on that.

All music is about relationships, and thus there is almost not 
component of music notation that does not change its meaning 
depending on context.

 Nevertheless, fine gradations are present and accounted for, and
 moreover, have meaning and usefulness and musicality.

I think there are practical limits to how far one can go with 
specifying fine gradations and specific dynamic levels and there is 
no getting around this limit when writing for live musicians.

 You know, there was a lot of music written in the 20th century that
 couldn't be played well, if at all. Younger performers are coming
 along in this century laying waste to that idea. Music that once
 sounded awkward and crude and full of errors is now tight and elegant
 and nearly flawless. Hearing it is a joy.

Yes, but the problems were mostly technical or due to new notational 
conventions. The question of dynamics is not like either of those 
issues, in my opinion. That is, increased exposure to highly-
specified dynamic markings is not going to magically make them 
suddently clear and transparent to interpreters. And I strongly doubt 
that there is ever going to be any change in the ability of 
instrumentalists to manage minute gradations of dynamics. I don't see 
any lack in that regard among present-day performers -- they can 
manage anything within the dynamic capabilities of the instruments 
they are playing. 

The problem is entirely notational, in my opinion.

Well, not entirely.

It's more complicated than that.

Because of the fact that music is composed of a web of complexly 
interacting relationships, I don't think that a more precise notation 
of the desired dynamic output is ever going to work terribly well. 
Something like the decimal-based numbers that were cited here earlier 
is over-specific, and, I think, entirely too strictly linear in its 
implications (dynamics are not strictly linear, as anyone who has 
every implemented a MIDI crescendo or dimenuend should recognize). 
Perhaps one could train musicians to be comfortable with that

Re: [Finale] 8th = Q

On 15 Feb 2006 at 23:09, Owain Sutton wrote:

 David W. Fenton wrote:
 
  My point is about how the notation indicates instructions to the
  performers. In that regard, I don't think that the dynamic markings
  beyond ppp and fff have any reliable interpretation that makes any
  sense.
  
  If, for instance, a passage is at ppp and you want to get softer, I
  think I'd just write softer and if even more is needed, softer
  still. These are clearly relative dynamic indications, without the
  stepped gradations implied by adding p's to the dynamic indication.
 
 I fail to see how this necessarily has an end result any different to
 'voodoo dynamics' (which is beginning to scream 'band name' at me...)

Well, I don't know that the voodoo dynamics are ineffective. I just 
find them intellectually and philosophically indefensible for the 
very reason that they can't really be defined as specifically and 
explicitly as the form in which they are notated implies.

  I think that's my problem with  and p. It's just not clear
  to me that there can be any difference between the two except in a
  context, and there is no rationally definable difference (in the
  mathematical sense of the word rational, not the logical sense)
  between the two.
 
 Unlike the clear and rational difference between 'softer' and 'softer
 still'? 

There is no implied rational relationship in those terms. They are 
deliberately and intentionally vague, unlike the overspecified 
pp, which implies some specific relationship to p and 
ppp.

And, in the end, the only thing those mean in order is softer and 
softer still. So why not just say that in the first place?

-- 
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights

On 15 Feb 2006 at 23:21, Johannes Gebauer wrote:

 On 15.02.2006 David W. Fenton wrote:
  Of course he can: I am working on a piece where the middle parts
  are
   missing. They need to be recomposed. (Not by me though, but by
   the editor).
  
  Recomposed or reconstructed?
 
 Well, in this case, what is the difference? Since it is not there,
 there isn't much you can reconstruct. All you can do is guess what it
 looked like and recompose it.

It depends entirely on how much you have to go on. If you're 
reconstructing 2 parts of a 4-part texture, it's probably 
recomposition (unless it's a strictly contrapuntal style where the 
possibilities are highly circumscribed and clearly implied by the 
remaining two voices).

If, on the other hand, you're supplying a viola part in a work with 
choral parts, basso continuo and two violin parts, then the 
reasonable possibilities for the viola are pretty narrow, and in that 
case, it would be reconstruction.

My viol consort spent some time recently playing a 4-part piece with 
a reconstructed top part, but it was imitative and in a strict style 
contrapuntally, so my guess is that the added top part was probably 
80% accurate or better (in terms of recreating what the original 
was). That would probably fall somewhere in between Sawkins's 
reconstructed viola part and the recomposed 2 parts of the 4-part 
piece.

It also depends on which parts are missing. Inner parts are going to 
be more limited in the possibilities than the outer parts. And it 
also depends on how much doubling there is and what's typical of the 
style of the period and of the particular composer.

I'm not at all discounting the possibility that an editor would 
contribute original material sufficient to reasonably assert co-
authorship. I'm only arguing that in the Sawkins case, it wasn't even 
close, and that the evidence presented to the judge made this pretty 
clear to anyone who understands the process.

It was obviously not clear to the judge, which is the criticism of 
the original decision that I've registered all along, that the final 
decision makes a hash of the editing process as practiced by 
musicologists, and as practiced in this case by Sawkins himself.

-- 
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights

On 15 Feb 2006 at 23:40, Johannes Gebauer wrote:

 On 15.02.2006 David W. Fenton wrote:
  One of the incentives for recording early music is that the music is
  public domain and that one doesn't have to pay for rights or pay
  royalties to the composer. One may pay fees to the owners of the
  editions used, but that's not the same thing as the kinds of fees
  that non-public domain projects require.  
 
 In Europe the law does actually guarantee royalties to editors of, in
 particular, critical editions. . . .

How many times must I post that this issue is irrelevant to the 
Hyperion decision? Sawkins was paid a fee for use of his edition in 
the recording. The lawsuit was about royalties, not about the 
customary fees paid for the use of editions in performance and in 
recordings.

 . . . It makes no difference whether the
 music is in the public domain, since what is to be compensated is not
 the composition itself, but the work which the editor invested in it.
 I realize that you think this work should be done as a sort of social
 donation, but personally I sympathize with the editors.

No, I don't think anything of the sort, and I've said repeatedly that 
I don't believe that. Editors should be compensated for their work by 
being paid editorial fees.

Sawkins received those fees.

Editors should not be entitled to the kinds of recording or 
performance royalties that are reserved for the authors of the 
performed music. *That* is what the Sawkins lawsuit was about, a 
claim on royalties that editors have historically not been paid.

 If the recording label doesn't want to pay royalties . . .

Keep in mind that hire fees for an edition and editing fees are not 
the same as royalties, which are paid on the volume of sales.

 . . . they can always
 go and find the original print or ms themselves. They may still get
 into trouble if no printed edition other than the one which demands
 royalties exists, since it is almost 100% sure that the publisher (or
 even the individual) holds the publication license, which also grants
 royalties, and can even prevent recordings or performances. . . .

In this case, there was an existing edition of at least some of the 
works that Sawkins edited. If I'm remembering correctly, the 
performers decided that the existing edition was unsatisfactory and 
specifically asked Sawkins to re-edit the music (if I'm remembering 
correctly, the existing edition did not account for all the avaliable 
sources). Sawkins was paid a fee for the use of this edition that 
he'd prepared at the request of the performers. 

 . . . This is
 actually a great thing for us performers, because when we find a
 previously unpublished piece of music, we can secure the performance
 and publication rights for us, and take our time doing the work
 without fearing that someone else might beat us at it. This has just
 recently been relevant again, with the recently discovered, previously
 unknown, aria by Bach. You cannot stage a performance or recording of
 this piece at this time - at least in Europe, because the library, who
 owns the publication and performance rights for the next few years,
 has decided that Gardiner will record it (? at least if I remember
 correctly).

Owning copyright on an edition does give you the right to not allow 
just anyone to have a copy. If the original sources are not available 
for others to create their own editions, yes, that means that the 
work is controlled by its modern publishers, and I think that's 
really a very bad thing.

 Imagine you find Beethoven's 10th symphony. You want to bring out the
 first edition of it, conduct the first performance, and make the first
 CD. It's your lottery tickey. But it requires some investment and
 time. Without protection someone with more resources will undoubtedly
 beat you at it. Leaving you nothing. Under German (and I assume
 European law) you can get protection by securing the rights for, I
 believe, 2 or 3 years.

The owner of the MS controls access to it, and recent US copyright 
law allows them to assert copyright on any unpublished MS, even if 
the author is dead. This, too, is a bad thing, in my opinion.

But you're talking about copyright in editions.

The Sawkins case is about recording and performance royalties, which 
are an entirely different issue, and historically not applicable to 
works in the public domain under any copyright laws, so far as I'm 
aware. That's precisely why the Hyperion case was such a thunderclap, 
in that it changed the rules, allowing editors to take works out of 
the public domain, and thus increase the costs of recordings.

I strongly doubt that the monetary rewards to be had from such 
additional fees for editors is sufficient (assuming recording 
companies would be able to pay them in any case) to entice musical 
editors that would otherwise not be contemplating editing music into 
producing editions. There is no way possible for the amount of work 
it takes to produce a good

[Finale] Slur issues

2006-02-15 Thread Brian Williams

Dear List,

I ask again:
What's the deal with smart slurs in the last couple versions of Finale for
Mac? Some of the slurs arch way too high when they're entered at 100% but
they look (and print) great at other percentages. Is this a known bug?

Brian

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[Finale] Short instant playback.

2006-02-15 Thread keith helgesen









I know I can get instant playback with Spacebar, Click measure,
and single part playback with Shift, spacebar, click measure. I also know how
to 

create and use list- ie Brass, woodwinds, etc.



Query- can I somehow ask for playback from, for example
Horns and Saxes, or Flutes, Trpts and Baritone?



I realize I can create a list for each combination, but I am
talking about a ‘one-off’ checking of one line or phrase –or even
note, against another, which may only last four measures and may never be used
again.



Maybe highlight required staves or something? (That doesn’t
work, by the way!)



WinFin 2001d



Cheers, Keith in OZ



Keith Helgesen.

Director of Music, Canberra City Band.

Ph: (02) 62910787. Band Mob. 0439-620587

Private Mob 0417-042171










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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights


On 16.02.2006 David W. Fenton wrote:

Yes, that is what I said. It's sad for the recording side of things.
 It's good for the critical edition side of things. Who has got more
 money?


The logic behind your argument escapes me. If the recordings are 
abandoned because of the fact that the record companies would lose 
money if they paid the editors the royalties, then where is the extra 
money going to come from to line the pockets of the editors? If no 
recordings are made, then there's no recording to sell to generate 
the revenue to pay the royalties. No egg, no chicken.




With the same argumentation you could also argue that musicians should 
not be paid because this stops concerts from being put on. Very silly, 
if you asked me. Do you also think that concerts should only be given as 
a hobby for no money? Perhaps the same should apply to composers? After 
all, if they didn't ask for any money they might get performed more often.


Johannes
--
http://www.musikmanufaktur.com
http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de

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Re: [Finale] Editions and Publishing Rights