David W. Fenton wrote:
If you sing the notes that are clearly indicated on the page, it will come out correctly.
That is true in any courtesy accidental situation. That is, hence, the reason they are "courtesy" and not "obligatory".
In my experience, many performers in many situations are not paying attention as well as perhaps they should. If a courtesy accidental can help such a musician play the right note with less brain power, I see every reason to provide it. In this particular style, esp. where the players are reading from score, a courtesy acci may truly be superflous. But if these were individual parts presented to professional orchestra musicians who might or might not really want to be there, I would definitely put them in.
If a pro orchestra musician plays the wrong note, even just once, because he wasn't strictly paying attention, he'll blame you, and imho he'll be right. I often never play a given bar more than about 3 times during rehearsals, and if I play the wrong note once, that's at least 33% of the rehearsal time I played it wrong. My music is littered with courtesy accis that I wrote in by hand, many of which I think should have been printed.
If you omit a courtesy accidental, and if ever in any rehearsal a musician stops it to ask, "what is my note at blah-blah-blah", you should have added the courtesy acci. In a pro orchestra rehearsal that omitted acci could just possibly have cost you hundreds of dollars. I prefer to err on the side of too many than too few.
Your argument would suggest that every single note should have a courtesy accidental, and that's absurd.
Not only is it not absurd, it many styles it is by far the clearest option. See, for example, the scores of George Crumb. Every note has an acci, including naturals, except for immediate repetitions of notes or patterns.
-- Robert Patterson http://RobertGPatterson.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
