On 3 Sep 2005 at 20:58, Raymond Horton wrote: > David W. Fenton wrote: > > >That would be Kalmus, of course. > > Ray adds: > > Thanks for the first part of that sentence, David. The "of course" > was not appropriate in this instance, of course! > > I have played as many or more bad Kalmus editions as any one else on > this list. . . .
The quality of some Kalmus editions is quite high, because until the last decade or so, they were all reprints of someone else's edition, most public domain, but sometimes including foreign editions that are arguably still copyrighted. Kalmus purposely chose to occupy a gray area in regard to copyright, quite unlike Dover, who makes a point of acquiring permission when necessary and of explicitly acknowledging that they are reprinting an out-of-print and/or public domain edition, while also providing value added in the form of short commentaries, translation of supplementary matter and, in the cases of songs, often providing translations of the texts. Kalmus never did that kind of thing -- they just did photographic reprints. But now they do their own engraving and are becoming respectable. > . . . Take a look at the bass trombone part to the Shostakovitch > 1st for a real crime - whole passeges left out, and others written in > the wrong octave by someone who couldn't figure out how to convert > alto clef into bass. Why he/she didn't leave the passage in alto, I > don't know. I never associated with Kalmus the color pink. My > color-OK family members in the other room say they see other colors on > the covers they have - green, etc. Well, that's not so much Kalmus's fault as the fault of the editors of whatever edition Kalmus reproduced. My guess it that Kalmus probably reprinted a Soviet edition, because for years Soviet copyrights were not respected in the West. I don't know the exact reasons for that -- perhaps the Soviet Union simply didn't sign the global copyright treaties. But the normal Kalmus edition did have pink covers, just as Peters/Hinrichsen has green covers and Schirmer the yellow covers with dark green ink. > >Well, I don't think there was any purpose served in color-encoding > >the references to publishers -- I was just following the practice > >already established, for humor's sake. > > > > > > > Yes, I realized that. I really did not mean to sound like I was > criticizing you in this instance, as the pink reference was very much > in context (more in context if it was corrrect, I suppose, but, > whatever...). Kalmus used pink covers, unquestionably. What's incorrect about it? > It just that there are too many things in the world that are > color-coded that don't have to be. As a computer programmer, I find color encoding extremely useful as a shorthand method for conveying useful information. I've never had any color-blind clients, so have never had any objections. > A number of years ago, when my orchestra would do some rehearsals at > the local large university (U. of Louisville) they would give us these > parking passes that would have one shade of a color, supposedly green, > on them. I would drive around until and hold the parking pass up next > to sign until I found one that looked the same color, as far as I > could tell. Then I would come back and find a ticket on my car > because that wasn't green, it was brown or something. The supposedly > green signs looked NOTHING like the shade of green on the parking pass > they'd given me. I'd go to the parking office and complain until they > would excuse the ticket. The problem was, they'd say, the parking > passes and the signs are printed by two different companies and > they're color greens don't match. I suggested that they paint their > colors on the sign and the parking pass if they want, but right in the > middle put a box with the word "GREEN." They said they'd think about > it - and did nothing. Well, that was a design error -- information conveyed by color ought to be also duplicated in text readable by those with difficulty distinguishing certain colors. [] > >Of course, Kalmus has actually changed its ways and is engraving its > >own editions, some of them actually respectable new editions and not > >stolen from anyone else. This has been the case for about the last 10 > > years, at least. > > Yes, the Master Music catalog has put out some nice, low-cost, > quality editions of works that were formerely available only from high > priced foreign sources. One dealer told me it was Kalmus's son, and > he was interested in input as to what pieces to bring out. That was > several years back, though. I know someone who did a lot of their engraving (using Score), and the results were quite beautiful (he had been an experienced hand copyist before taking up computer engraving and so the results he got were quite good). -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
