On 1 Jun 2010 at 23:47, John Howell wrote: []
> in the specific case of editing early music, the original > notation very often suggests very different interpretations from what > we think the composer might have intended, so just as a performer > bridges the gap between composer and audience, we bridge the gap > between the long-dead composer and the modern performer. That's what > David meant about a performing edition as opposed to a scholarly > edition, because we're applying what WE have learned about the music > of the composer's time. I make my own decisions about musica ficta, > for instance, since I hopefully understand as much about it as any > other editor and more than some. I think it's useful to think of a performing edition as a realization of the actual score, with that which is left to the performer's discretion in the original score made explicit in the performing edition (to some level of specificity). The Alfred editions of the Bach 2- and 3-part inventions are an example of a non-invasive way to do this, with the "real" text of the scores printed in black, but with the ornaments fully realized in half-tone gray. It's an incredibly useful pedagogical edition, but not one that a fully-trained harpsichordist or pianist is going to find useful (since the keyboardist well-versed in the style is going to have their own ideas about the exact realization of the ornaments). And I use the term "realization" for all its resonances from "continuo realization," where you start with a bass line and figures, and the exact notes to be supplied above the bass are left to the player. If I write them out, I'm realizing one interpretation of what is inherent in the original bass line with figures (and in a performing edition, a realization is necessary, though I suggest it should be as minimal as possible, suggesting only the basic harmonies, and involving no "creative" figuration; but I'm a real minimalist in terms of continuo realization, anyway, believing that most of them should be 2 and 3 voices at most, with 4 voices (or more) reserved for loud sections). Likewise, a performing edition that supplies ficta or bowings or editorial dynamics not found in the original is a realization of the original but not the only possible one. I like to make my performing editions as transparent as possible to the end users, so they can distinguish my editorial intervention from the original text (and ignore it if they have good reason to do so, or, for that matter, just because they want to). I think it's kind of useless to produce critical editions that aren't usable as performing editions because much of the music that gets the critical edition treatment is never going to get any other editions. That is, it's a performing edition or nothing, and if it's not a performing edition, there's going to be a real barrier there to players picking up the music and performing it. My goal is leave the sight reader with no doubt of one way to perform the music, while allowing the interested to study the editorial interventions and discard or emend as they see fit. I think it's better to do that than to expect all performers to be editors (this is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of "performer's facsimiles," as it takes real experts to get the most out of them -- they take a lot of study and effort to absorb and figure out how to resolve the ambiguities inherent in the original). [] > I do draw a distinction > between editing and arranging. Mostly. (I'm not really happy with > this definition, but in general I think of editing as preparation for > publication, and arranging as preparation for performance. But THAT > distinction breaks down, too.) I do a lot of arranging for my consort, and tend to do as little intervention as possible. Like the Walsingham that I posted earlier, it's a case of transcribing from one medium to another (in that case, keyboard to 3 viols), and in that case, I feel no compunction to avoid converting idiomatic material from the one medium into different material that is idiomatically equivalent in the new medium. I guess that seems to be contradictory, since I said "as little intervention as possible" but keyboard figuration is often unplayable or awkward when transferred directly to strings, so changing it to something more idiomatic seems to me to be exactly "as little intervention as possible" *if* your ultimate goal is to have a piece in the new medium that stands on its own, and is not a mere lesser and incomplete copy of the original. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
