On 29 May 2003 at 8:10, Michael Edwards wrote: > [Ray Horton:] > I guess the situation is a bit difficult for older music, where notation > has changed sufficiently that older music might be difficult for modern people > to read. I suppose we have to accept standardizing there.
Actually, I would entirely disagree with that assertion. If you're going to play older music, you really need to learn to read the older notation. The classic example of this is the Classical era notation of the apoggiatura. Take Mozart's K. 332 Sonata in Bb, which begins with the falling figure, 16th-note appoggiatura, 8th note, 16th, 16th. It is played as 4 16ths, and the late 19th century Mozart edition published by B&H transcribed it as that. But the result is that it obscres the musical significance of that first note. The original notation makes quite clear that it is a non- harmonic tone, that the one notated as the 8th note is the harmonic tone. It points out to the reader that the passage starts with a harmonic dissonance. The 4 16th-notes version obscures that. Nowadays everyone knows about this notational convention, and it's not really an issue. And I think that's *very* important -- if you want to learn the music of a particular style, you need to learn the notational conventions of that style. That goes for *any* period of music, old or new. > But surely such editions should labelled "edited by <so-and-so>", with > annotations about the changes that have been made. And, especially for > scholarly or purist use, you could have another edition that reproduces Bach's > notation exactly. . . . Well, a facsimile does that for you. The "Urtext" is a falsification. It tries to present the "original text" (leaving aside all the difficult issues about *which* original text), but modern Urtext editions make all sorts of silent alterations to the original notation. What you are speaking of is more a diplomatic transcription of the original source, and those have their place, but often don't work very well as performing editions. > . . . And editions should be clearly marked as "updated according > to modern notational conventions" (or according to the editor's opinion about > what modern conventions are), or as giving the composer's version. I agree. And the changes should be clear from the musical text. > But where a composition is recent enough to be using essentially the same > conventions we understand today, mere differences of style should surely be > honoured, and a meaningless conformity to one style not imposed on everyone. Hah! There are more different notational conventions going on today than perhaps at any other period in musical history that I can think of! -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
