On 20 Nov 2007 at 5:59, dhbailey wrote: > I've seen lots of editions of early music (mostly recorder music but > something in my memory is suggesting I've seen them in H.A.M. also) > where the editorial accidentals above the notes did NOT change the > unambiguous (to those who already knew the style) musical line which the > composer obviously intended. The very situation which Dennis asked > about is one where I have seen lots of editorial (above the notes) > accidentals which merely confirmed what I already knew.
Well, I don't want to make an argument from authority, but I have a bit of training in editing early music, and regularly *play* early music. The practice you describe is not what is recommended for the use of the editorial accidental above the note. The only exception would be a second occurrence of a note in a measure with no explicit accidental with what I'd consider a courtesy accidental placed above the note. There is no reason ever to provide an accidental above the note when all it does is repeat what the key signature already tells you. In the example at hand, if you're adding anything (and I don't believe there's any significant utility in doing so, unless you are creating a pedagogical edition for high school musicians, for instance), it should be an inline courtesy accidental in brackets/parens. Anything else is going to cause even more confusion than the (in my opinion) unnecessary courtesy accidentals. -- 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
