David Bailey wrote: > >I'm not John (and I haven't played him on TV either) but I will add my >2-cents'-worth:
Heck, I'VE never played me on TV, either. At least not recently. David's comments are not quite in line with those I just posted, but offer an interesting second opinion that I find helpful. > >If you aren't a string player and don't have access to a very competent >string player, then you should NOT take any guess at the bowings. This >won't help anybody at all and will result in extra work. Well, you have to judge your level of incompetence accurately. As I indicated, you're better off indicating your intentions as long as you know HOW to do so. That's different from random guessing. > >You SHOULD place any and all slurs which you want to be real slurs, not >merely phrase markings, and let the concertmaster figure out the bowings > to achieve the best musical result. Definitely true. Although in practice it'll be the 5 section principals who have that responsibility, usually with one eye on the concertmaster. > >If there are situations where you want strong, accented notes, then it >would be okay to place scattered down-bow markings on those notes, to >show what you want, and don't place any other bowings around them. Let >the concertmaster work out how best to arrive at your few indicated >downbows which you have placed for emphasis. A specific case of where your intentions can be indicated. It's fine to indicate something like this, combined with dots or horizontal or vertical accent marks if appropriate, in the first bar of a passage and then indicate "sim." as long as it's obvious when you should stop playing that way. (Same thing if you forget to insert an "arco" after a "pizz." passage.) > >And as an aside, even if you DO know a competent string player (or ARE >one), you shouldn't put a lot of bowings in the music because no two >competent string players will agree 100% of the time anyway. I've got to trope this statement. There are certain things in orchestral protocol that are learned so early and so well that doing them is automatic. Given that David's statement about string players is more-or-less correct, ALL string players will follow the bowings asked for by the conductor, the concertmaster, or their section principal without question, whether they like them or not. So taken at face value this statement is just a copout. >Place what >is necessary to guarantee the result you want in certain places and >leave all the other bowings off the page, since they will be changed >anyway. Again, a judgement call. IF you can make your intentions clear, do so. Having to cross out the printed ones to put the new ones in >makes the music that much harder to read and wastes time. No, trying to guess at the writer's intentions in the absence of any indications is what wastes time, because the musical result will be unsatisfactory and it will take someone a while to come up with a possible interpretation. Which means the writer has failed to communicate. And we mark up our parts all the time; no big deal. 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 _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
