>>>>> "John" == John Chambers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
John> Simon Wascher writes:
John> | I usually use "#"A or "b"A to show editorial accidentals.
John> I've done this, too. One thing to beware of here is that in some
John> musical circles, an accental above (or below) the note is used to
John> mean "just this one note".
Which would be generally true of ficta in early music, which would
also be editorial. So this isn't either/or.
John> Of course, this runs afoul of another inconsistent usage: Some people
John> use parens around accidentals to mean that the accidental is
John> optional; the note may be played either way. It's yet another way
John> that musicians are inconsistent.
No, ficta in early music often means means that, too.
I think you're expecting too much rigor. In music before the
major/minor key system got established in the eighteenth century, the
accidentals were often a performer's decision; the key signature
indicated the mode the composer thought the piece was in, and he
expected performers to make some of their own decisions about where to
put accidentals, such as sharping the leading tone. These accidentals
(at the time "everybody knew" they should be there) are called
_musica ficta_. Modern editors mostly assume that performers don't
intend to make those decisions, so they make suggestions about which
accidentals they would use. To distinguish these from the ones the
composer wrote into the text, they are often placed above the note or
in parentheses. And in much of the period we're talking about, music
was written without barlines at all, so the rule about an accidental,
whether ficta or written by the composer, couldn't possibly have been
used.
So the three usages you're talking about are in fact roughly
equivalent; if an accidental is above the note or in parentheses, it
may well be all of:
editorial
applying to only one note, not the rest of the measure
optional
I would personally consider an edition that used accidentals before
the note as applying to the whole measure and those over the note as
applying to only one note pretty confusing, but I'm sure there are
people who think that's obvious.
--
Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org/ )
(617) 661-8097 fax: (801) 365-6574
233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139
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