David W. Fenton wrote:
I don't dispute your examples of typeset music, but they are
*outliers* in terms of normal practice after the period John
mentions.
The hymnal and choral octavo _are_ outliers, and I intended them as
such. However, I have found that handset type was common until about
1950, and was normative for certain types of music publications,
particularly high-volume items (like hymnals and songbooks) with a
significant alphabetic content.
David stated further,
Thus, your hypothesis that norms of typeset music may have caused the
engraver of the Paganini to emit duplet indicators is simply
completely implausible. By the time any Paganini work was published,
engraving or lithography would have been the norm.
While I'm prepared to accept that the Paganini might have been engraved
or lithographed, my personal experience is that there is enough
possibility that it was typeset that it is risky to venture an opinion
whether a specific score was typeset or engraved (or prepared by some
other method) unless one direct examines the score in question. I have
personally examined instrumental music from the late 19th century and
determined it to have been typeset, and I have examined a printer's
manual from about 1875 which includes the layout for a fount of music
types, spread across three cases, and including signs used to designate
up and down bow indications.
Further, even if your position that the music of Paganini was engraved,
the fact that music was produced with handset type prior to the custom
of engraving it still admits the possibility that the engravers were
themselves following a custom established in a prior time, and dictated
by the limitations of a former technology, so that while the engraver
may have not realized that omission of tuplet indicators was a result of
a norm of typesetting, that these norms were in fact the origin of the
convention.
And again, to restate the major point: whether they were made by a
editor, or a production person, such as a lithographer, a typesetter, or
an engraver, the fact remains that printed editions may well be the
product of choices of other persons than the composer.
ns
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