At 11:49 AM -0500 10/12/12, Patrick Sheehan wrote:
>Well, if we just copy-and-pasted and not have to worry about D. S.'s and D.
>C.'s and D. Q.'s and Fine's and Codas and signs here and signs here and
>there, we wouldn't have to worry about using these things.
>
>Using D.C.'s and "roadmap" signs are confusing to the player. We should be
>able to read pieces of music from top to bottom without hopping around like
>a jackrabbit.
Again, why? Why build in additional page turns?
Why duplicate what's already there? A player who
gets confused is a player who hasn't yet learned
to read the music as a whole, and it's our job to
teach them to do so.
I've found only two instances where the roadmaps
can go overboard and TRULY create confusion for
even the best musicians. The first is the 15 or
so examples of early dance pieces in 13th and
14th century Trouvère and Italian manuscripts.
The repeat schemes are recursive, complex, and
very difficult to follow, using a whole
collection of different repeat marks (one of
which comes down to us today as our fermata
sign). But (a) the velum on which they are
copied was expensive to produce and did not
encourage leaving a lot of empty space requiring
additional pages; and (b) those manuscripts were
intended to be memorized and not EVER used in
actual performance. They were a means of storing
information.
The second is the equally recursive and complex
roadmaps of Viennese waltzes and polkas, which
are extremely easy to misread and which can
easily confuse even the best musicians. But
again, while the intent was not that the music be
memorized, the musicians for whom it was written
KNEW the forms and really needed no more than
reminders of how the form fit together.
Compared with these, the relatively simple repeat
schemes of French baroque rondeaux form or music
written in that style are a piece of cake,
although a naive player may need a 2-minute
explanation of how to follow the form.
All the best,
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
School of Performing Arts & Cinema
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
290 College Ave., Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:john.how...@vt.edu)
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
"Machen Sie es, wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur schön."
(Do it as you like, just make it beautiful!) --Johannes Brahms
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