On 16 Jun 2006, at 6:29 PM, John Howell wrote:
Somebody also finally realized that paper is cheap and rehearsal
time is expensive, and that you break pages early for a good page
turn!!
Standard B'way practice for years. No reputable B'way music service
would turn out books with crappy page turns. (Although I noticed one
of the original books for _Assassins_ had the right and left pages
flipped (i.e., the music was supposed to start on a RH page, but
actually started on a LH page). The copyist had gone to all the
trouble of creating good page turns, and then somebody messed up in
the binding!)
Has engraved parts become usual on Broadway these days?
Yes, for many years now.
And since they were done in Finale, it would have been trivial to
produce a full score, so why don't they!???!
Money. They would still have to pay union scale for score prep (as
they should -- I've done score prep, and it's definitely not
"trivial" by any means.)
At first I though it was a mistake to stick with the 4-bars-per-
line rule when typeset music can be more efficiently compressed.
(Is that a union rule?)
Not necessarily -- the "page" rates assume 4mm./system, but there's
no reason (other than expediency) why billable "pages" must equal
actual physical pages. But having the phrasing of the music reflected
in the layout is very important regardless of extra-musical concerns,
as you say below:
Then we had our first rehearsal, and the 4-bars really helped me
when we'd made a page turn and I couldn't remember how many bars
rest were left on the previous page. OK, I'm convinced!
Typical of Broadway music, there are many instances where a number
of bars have been cut out, but atypical of the old manuscript
parts, they've simply been excised from the parts while keeping
their original bar numbers. But in every case an instruction like
"[to 115]" is given, even though the next bar in the music is
actually bar 115. That strikes me as a temporary expedient that I
would have removed when the intervening measures had been removed.
Is there a reason for leaving them in?
Yes, so the players know *why* the measure numbers go "101, 102, 103,
115"! Also so they don't automatically assume the measure after 103
is m.104.
(4) For those who've actually worked in Broadway pits, are they
actually big enough to house a set of vibes along with the
xylophone, bells, timpani, and drum set as well as a ton of toys?
Yes.
(5) I panicked when I saw that the cello book was absolutely full
of treble clef. In fact, only 3 notes in tenor clef, and I'll bet
they were inherited from the old orchestration! But my first
cellist assures me that she is used to it and will enjoy the
challenge. My question is whether the use of treble in cello parts
has become so common as not to raise questions?
Yes, of course -- any cellist good enough to be playing in a B'way
pit can read treble clef without any problem. (Are there a lot of
working cellists out there who *can't* read treble clef?)
- Darcy
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