At 8:49 PM +0100 4/22/12, Steve Parker wrote: > >If a copyist cannot see the difference between >major and minor in a score then find another >copyist.
Historically, however, typesetters (in the 16th and 17th centuries) or engravers (in the 18th and 19th) were craftsmen but not necessarily musicians at all. (Same thing for monks with feathers in previous centuries!) It was the editors who gave them the final copy to set or engrave, and they copied what was put in front of them. Then proofreaders (often recruited among college students in 16th century Paris) checked the final version against the edited original. And STILL errors crept in, as we know very well! The lines have become blurred in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, when an engraver or copyist might indeed be a musician, perhaps a budding composer or arranger who is trying to get a foot in the door, and when composers and arrangers often count on their copyists to know more about the specifics of notation than the composers themselves seem to! (On the other hand, Anita Dukoff, who was a vocalist with Billy May, said that Billy would copy out parts for a new chart on the band bus on the way to a gig, sometimes roaring drunk, put them in front of the band cold, and they were always perfect!) When my late wife was a composition major in college (long pre-computer engraving), they were required to take a music calligraphy class. The silly professors thought that their music should be readable! I developed a very readable hand just because too much time and confusion would result if I didn't. But "readable" isn't "artistic," and thank goodness we still have major publishers whose standards give us something to look up to. (And if anyone else has suffered through trying to read badly-engraved Contemporary Christian charts out of Nashville they know how much bad engraving can mess up a performance!) John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music School of Performing Arts & Cinema College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences 290 College Ave., Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[email protected]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "Machen Sie es, wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur schön." (Do it as you like, just make it beautiful!) --Johannes Brahms _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
