Dirk Laurie wrote:
>
> [The contribution below is a little off-topic and may be ignored
> if you are not in the mood for chatting.]
>
> What does get my goat are scores containing cautionary accidentals that
> are not marked as such. We are at present rehearsing Messiah from the
> Novello edition (for the Voices for Hospice day, October 14) and it is
> full of accidentals that are in the key signature too, but happen to
> have been overridden as many as three bars ago. In one particularly
> bizarre case, the offending accidental belongs to the first note in the
> first bar of a new even-numbered page. I.e. you have just turned the
> page when you see it -- the previous accidental is not even in sight.
> Approximately 2mm separates it from its companion on the same line in the
> key signature. You can't blame a middle-aged tenor, peering guiltily
> though his bifocals instead of staring intently at the conductor, for
> sight-reading it wrong.
>
OK, let me contribute a little to the chatting. In the notation of
'classic' dodechaphonic music (Sch�nberg, Webern, Berg, Eisler ...) a
rather special useage of 'accidentals' has been established: each new
note is prefixed with an accidental, i.e. a sharp, a flat or a natural
in order to make sure exactly which pitch is meant. Of course it belongs
to the picture that this kind of music can't be said to be in any 'key'.
--
Christian Mondrup, Computer Programmer
Scandiatransplant, Skejby Hospital, University Hospital of Aarhus
Brendstrupgaardsvej, DK 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark
Phone: +45 89 49 53 01
