[The contribution below is a little off-topic and may be ignored
if you are not in the mood for chatting.]
Simons, Don skryf:
>
> On the other hand, cautionary accidentals never affect whether an accidental
> should or should not be played. They are simply warnings to the player to
> be careful and follow the usual rules. If all players always followed the
> usual rules then cautionary accidentals would be unnecessary.
>
What does get my goat are scores containing cautionary accidentals that
are not marked as such. We are at present rehearsing Messiah from the
Novello edition (for the Voices for Hospice day, October 14) and it is
full of accidentals that are in the key signature too, but happen to
have been overridden as many as three bars ago. In one particularly
bizarre case, the offending accidental belongs to the first note in the
first bar of a new even-numbered page. I.e. you have just turned the
page when you see it -- the previous accidental is not even in sight.
Approximately 2mm separates it from its companion on the same line in the
key signature. You can't blame a middle-aged tenor, peering guiltily
though his bifocals instead of staring intently at the conductor, for
sight-reading it wrong.
Dirk
