John Howell wrote:
At 5:25 PM +0000 2/1/06, Owain Sutton wrote:
I don't accept that the success of Petrucci's innovation is proof that
these books were being bought primarily to use for performances. It's
too big an assumption. I like to draw a parallel with minature scores
of symphonic repertoire - sure, they sell well, but hardly anybody
either plays or conducts from them.
(And I'm not sure what this thread was about to start with, either ;) )
Well, as long as we agree on that ...!
Your mention of study scores (which I have often enough seen used by
conductors, although these old eyes could no longer mange that
particular trick) suggests that those oversized choirbook-format
publications were used for study rather than performance, even though
that format was intended (and presumably used) for, well, choirs. If my
assumption is too big, yours is even bigger. What use would you assume
they were bought for? (And we've established, I think, that they were
not inexpensive.)
John
I'm making *no* assumption - although we should be distinguishing
between the choirbook layout of the Odhecaton (suitable, I accept, for
performance use) and the part-books of the sacred collections, which are
quite unlike the typical performance sources. My suggestion is that if
the market Petrucci sold these to was primarily performance-orientated,
he'd have made far more effort to replicate manuscript practice, e.g. in
the way Antico did. But he didn't, which to me suggests a different
market entirely. And it would be speculative to claim anything more
precise than that!
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