Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
On Mon, November 19, 2007 2:50 pm, Noel Stoutenburg wrote:
In my view, it would depend upon the musical sophistication of the
likely users of the score. The more expert and familiar with early
music, the more one can omit both; the lower the level of
sophistication, the more necessary both accidentals are.
A few folks have said this, but it bothers me. Sophistication? Does that
mean this sophisticated singer is going to be insulted by courtesy
accidentals? Is the presence of courtesies actually a sales limiter? Will
these sophisticated buyers put the score back on the shelf with a snort?
And who knows what hands the score falls into, irrespective of its
intended audience. What about future history, when score reading shifts?
Scholarship changes, and I lived through the early music period of "yes,
this is flat" and "no it's not" and Noah Greenberg's madness and published
editions like (IIRC) Oxford's that did the old hands-off, putting every
accidental as an editorial suggestion above the note. Will future
performers have to re-research what was meant by the courtesy-free score,
just to be sure to be sure? It's not like courtesies are some sort of
pornographic stain on perfectly good white paper. Or are they to such
sophisticated singers?
In my experience musicians come in all sorts of shades of flexibility,
from the "what the hell's that cautionay accidental doing there, of
course that's a natural and anybody who would think otherwise shouldn't
be allowed to perform!" to the other extreme of "hey, I play (sing)
what's on the page, and if there's extra accidentals to be sure I don't
make a mistake, it's no big deal."
Yes, some people would be insulted by the cautionary accidentals. And
in any event, there will always be the "I'm a freaking expert so listen
to what I say!" fool who will issue declarations contrary to whatever's
on the page (cautionary accidental or not) simply to try to show
intellectual superiority.
And even if there aren't any people with egos the size of Montana trying
to prove they're God's gift to music theory, there will always be
debates as to whether the cautionary accidentals are valid or not, so
it's not as if one way or the other will actually reduce rehearsal problems.
And then there's the school of thought which says that current research
(witness your acounts of the early Early Music Period and Noah
Greenberg's 'madness') may well be flawed and that no, we don't know for
sure whether the cautionary accidentals are the real way they would have
performed the music originally, they're simply our best guess based on
further research than was available 40 years ago when the Early Music
field was beginning to really blossom. Leaving them out if they're not
in the original can allow the performers to think through the situation
afresh, and possibly in light of new research which might appear during
the next 20 years (or even 6 months!).
That's why I think it IS important to consider one's market for the music.
I don't think there's anything sinful about including the courtesy
accidentals, and I think I would be inclined to include them and tell
anybody who complained about them to go take a hike, but I can see the
argument for leaving them out also since I'm not the god of early music
practice and whatever I do would just be my best guess based on what
sounds most appropriate to my ears.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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