RegoR wrote:
A subtle distinction needs to be drawn here. My objection is not as a bassoonist, but as a composer. As a bassoonist, I have no beef w. the clef at all--but as a composer, I find it an unnecessary complication of the notational system.
Andrew,
Your point has been clearly made, and as a composer, I can agree with your reasoning, but then, as an instrumentalist, do you feel that it then becomes the duty of the copyist to satisify the needs of the performer and engrave the music using the clefs that are more comfortable for a performer to use?
Also, do you feel that the full score should be engraved only in Treble and Bass Clefs, or should it be engraved to reflect the parts as they are written for the performer.
If the latter, does this also mean that a score should be engraved TRANSPOSED, or should it be engraved as NON-transposed.
I'm not Andrew, but I'll weigh in on these questions:
Yes, I think the engraver should make the parts most easily read by the performer, but that should be done only with the consent of the client (most likely the composer, but possibly the publisher.) If that means using different clefs because of the nature of the instrument or the performing situation, then they should be used.
The score should be engraved to reflect the parts as they are written for the performer -- speaking as a conductor, I find it a terrible waste of time when I have no clue what the performer is looking at because the score is engraved one way and the parts are different. I hate the band world's use of condensed scores for that same reason -- when a performer isn't sure about a note and asks what the pitch or the rhythm should be, if I don't have an exact copy of what that part looks like, it often takes me a few moments of valuable rehearsal time to work out the problem. Worst of all are the 2-staff piano scores which don't even include all the cues.
I like the fully transposed scores, so I am looking at EXACTLY what the performer is looking at. That way we can discuss any problem in either notation or performance clearly and precisely.
Conductors worthy of the name should be able (in my opinion) to work from a transposed score and figure out the concert-pitch sounds from that.
I've seen cases of non-transposed scores, back in the pre-computer days, when a transposed part would have a measure or two engraved where the engraver forgot to transpose and left those measures in concert pitch. What a waste of time, resolving the "but it's printed in my part and that's what I played" / "it's printed concert pitch, you need to transpose those two measures" issues. They're not common, thank goodness, but if the score is transposed, the parts are more likely to be correct, in my experience.
-- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
