On 16 Feb 2006 at 15:13, Andrew Stiller wrote: > On Feb 15, 2006, at 10:27 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > If you're > > reconstructing 2 parts of a 4-part texture, it's probably > > recomposition (unless it's a strictly contrapuntal style where the > > possibilities are highly circumscribed and clearly implied by the > > remaining two voices). > > > > If, on the other hand, you're supplying a viola part in a work with > > choral parts, basso continuo and two violin parts, then the > > reasonable possibilities for the viola are pretty narrow, and in > > that case, it would be reconstruction. > > Just out of curiosity (no ax to grind): I am working on a 19th-c. > orchl. score that is missing its cornet and tuba parts (they wouldn't > fit on the page), Aside from a few verbal cues in the MS (such as > "cornet solo" or "tuba furthers doubling of basses etc.") I have > nothing to go on but the composer's general style, including the way > he handles these instruments in other pieces. Is what I am doing a > reconstruction or a recomposition? > > To me, I think the line should be drawn based on whether the new > material changes the character of the piece as a whole.
Well, I'm not sure that alone has much utility in drawing the distinction. In the de Lalande with the missing viola part, leaving it out is going to sound different from having it in, most obviously in the parts for strings alone. But whatever one reconstructs is not "creative," but implied by all the other available information. In the case of the missing cornet parts, my guess is that it's pretty clear that your choices are limited to to 2 or 3 different notes within any harmonic context, but the figuration and voicing need to be determined with no real information on what they should have been. Obviously, you can look at the composer's other cornet parts in similar works and attempt to write in the same style of figuration, but there's no guarantee that the composer had not departed from his usual practice in the missing parts. There's also the question of whether the parts were left out of the score because of no room, or because the work was originally intended not to include them. Mozart has a couple of symphonies that were written without trumpets and timpani, and he added them in on separate paper later. That means there are two versions of those symphonies, without trumpets and drums and with them. In Mozart's case, if the added parts had not been saved with the autograph scores, we'd never have known that it was appropriate to have added them. But, on the other hand, I think we know that in Mozart's time, symphonies in certain keys in certain styles would often add trumpets and drums as a matter of performance practice, improvised by the performers reading from a bass line (Dwight Blazin has done work on this subject in the Salzburg repertory). The military musicians in Salzburg were not actually members of the Capella, but were frequently called in to supplement the orchestra. And there is some question as to the degree of their musical literacy. My point is that the absence of certain things in the autograph score or authentic sources does not guarantee that the composer did not assume these things would be added by performers cognizant of the oral traditions surrounding the performance of such works. In that respect, adding trumpets and drums to D Major symphonies in extroverted style might very well be almost obligatory, even if we lack any actual evidence that the instruments were used in performance of that particular piece at the time. So, in the case of Mozart, I think we'd be reconstructing trumpet and drum parts. In the case of more complex musical styles and more versatile instruments (mid-19th century cornets and tubas were far more capable than the trumpets and timpani of Mozart's day, which were basically limited to tonic and dominant and a handful of other notes for the trumpets), it seems to me that one is reconstructing lost music but one may have to exercise significant compositional skill to do so. So, I'm hedging my bets! :) > The Baroque ensemble Tempesta di Mare has made a name for itself in > part through its performances and recordings of reconstructed lute > concertos by Sylvius Leopold Weiss--concertos for which only the lute > part actually survives. The entire orchestral part had to be > recreated. The resulting pieces sound very convincing and realistic, > and are credited to Weiss, but I can't help but thinking, each time I > hear one of them, that if Handel had done the exact same thing--taken > a Weiss lute part and added new orchestral accompaniments--that we > would not hesitate a moment to ascribe the resulting work to Handel, > not Weiss. Your thoughts? I think I would agree that the orchestral versions are a recomposition, and basically a new work, and worthy of copyright independent from Weiss's work. They may be an attempt to reconstruct something lost, but because so much is lost and there are no sources whatsoever that indicate what would have been in the orchestra parts, it seems to me that there's very little constricting the choices of the editor. In Sawkins's case, his reconstructed part and his figures in the continuo were almost completely dictated by the existing materials. While it takes skill and knowledge to determine what the limited choices are and then making a decision on the best fit, most people with the skill to make this kind of reconstruction would come up with largely the same result. I think that's sort of how I make my determination. Given two experts in the field, if you gave them all the source materials, how likely is it that their reconstructions would be nearly identical? The more there is a departure from that, the more the result merits the term "recomposition" and the edition copyright independent from the original work. But it's always going to be a judgment call, not any hard and fast rule. That said, the Sawkins case doesn't seem to me to come even close to being a recomposition. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
