At 11:49 AM -0500 10/12/12, Patrick Sheehan wrote: >Well, if we just copy-and-pasted and not have to worry about D. S.'s and D. >C.'s and D. Q.'s and Fine's and Codas and signs here and signs here and >there, we wouldn't have to worry about using these things. > >Using D.C.'s and "roadmap" signs are confusing to the player. We should be >able to read pieces of music from top to bottom without hopping around like >a jackrabbit.
Again, why? Why build in additional page turns? Why duplicate what's already there? A player who gets confused is a player who hasn't yet learned to read the music as a whole, and it's our job to teach them to do so. I've found only two instances where the roadmaps can go overboard and TRULY create confusion for even the best musicians. The first is the 15 or so examples of early dance pieces in 13th and 14th century Trouvère and Italian manuscripts. The repeat schemes are recursive, complex, and very difficult to follow, using a whole collection of different repeat marks (one of which comes down to us today as our fermata sign). But (a) the velum on which they are copied was expensive to produce and did not encourage leaving a lot of empty space requiring additional pages; and (b) those manuscripts were intended to be memorized and not EVER used in actual performance. They were a means of storing information. The second is the equally recursive and complex roadmaps of Viennese waltzes and polkas, which are extremely easy to misread and which can easily confuse even the best musicians. But again, while the intent was not that the music be memorized, the musicians for whom it was written KNEW the forms and really needed no more than reminders of how the form fit together. Compared with these, the relatively simple repeat schemes of French baroque rondeaux form or music written in that style are a piece of cake, although a naive player may need a 2-minute explanation of how to follow the form. All the best, 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
