Re: [Finale] TAN - Use of sz ligature: opinions?
Can I say something too? I just joined this Finale mailing list and I'm reading the discussions with interest. As now about the ß: For my work on music by Buxtehude I studied the old German handwriting, the Sütterlin Schrift. And in that writing I would definitely say that the ß is a contraction, a ligature of the s (the f-like character) and the z (normally going under the baseline, but now starting high up). Also I'm glad to hear that the general opinion is to keep the original spelling, as I incline to do so. But there are other things. As Buxtehude is even older, his spelling is also more antique (with words like seyn). That would make the edition somewhat archaic. And moreover, in those days people were not as consequent with spelling as we are today. You see todt and tod alongside of each other. Obviously spelling didn't really matter in those days. So I would say it is up to the editor to choose to use modern spelling (keeping the ß) and thereby losing the time flavor. Or he can stick to the original spelling. I think it is also a question of the purpose of the edition. Mark D Lew wrote: I do of course realize that, in spite of its name, the glyph is the equivalent of a double s, not an s and a z. mdl ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] TAN - Use of sz ligature: opinions?
David W. Fenton wrote: I'm not sure where you're getting the sz from -- that is not what it is at all. If you look at it in German schrift (i.e., handwriting), it's quite clear that it's two s's, one the f-like version followed by a crook to a regular lower-case s. I am not sure where this interpretation comes from, but I don't think it is correct. The hadnwritten sz in old German handwriting is made up from a long, or middle word s, and a handwritten z, which looks almost like a 3. I am pretty sure that this is the original ligature. But then I wouldn't dare to call myself an expert on this (although I did learn the old German handwriting and can both read and write it). Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] TAN - Use of sz ligature: opinions?
On Feb 15, 2005, at 5:21 AM, d. collins wrote: Mark D Lew écrit: Usually, but not always -- âmeanima, sûrsecurus, chaîncatena, rôlerotulus. In these cases, it's more than a consonant that became silent: a whole syllable. Well, you could say the same of some of the s ones, eg îleisola. Anyway, I didn't mean to offer any theory about how the words, or the symbol, evolved. I was only noting that when I think of cognates in other Romance languages I notice the missing consonant and it isn't always an s. With âme, my first thought is actually alma, not anima. (And even in some of these cases, the circumflex does take the place of an s in the evolution. Chaîne comes from catena, of course, but the form that precedes chaîne is chaisne (See Littré: Pour porter au col, eut une chaisne d'or, RAB. Garg. I, 8. Tandis que tu as gardé le silence [dit Apelles à Megabysus], tu sembloies quelque grande chose à cause de tes chaisnes et de ta pompe, MONT. IV, 49.)) Thanks, I didn't know about chaisne. My Petit Robert, in its brief etymology, mentions chaeine from 1080, but no chaisne. The pattern of a syllable reducing to just e and then becoming a circumflex is also indicated in securussegurseürsûr. Again, I'm just noticing and speculating here. I'm really not studied in this at all (though I do find it interesting). mdl ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] TAN - Use of sz ligature: opinions?
Mark D Lew schrieb: Thanks to all for the advice. It definitely helps my thinking on this question. Having read the other comments so far I would second the advice (and repeat my first one) to use the original orthography. A few points I didn't make clear in the first post: - I'm not just citing a few texts; I'll be reproducing entire librettos. Then you would have even more difficulties with modernizing (in terms of quantity ;-) - I have two source texts available to me, one original and one modernized. My choice is pretty much just which of the two to use; I wouldn't have to go through and make the changes myself. I've got a list of the current official rules, and I think I could apply them properly, but that's more work than I care to do. It's been a while since I've looked at that second source text (I used the first one in an earlier edition) so I don't recall exactly how much is changed in it. I'm pretty sure that ALL ß's were changed to ss, and all th's are changed to t. There may have been other changes I didn't notice. *If* this modernized edition exclusively uses ss then it certainly is no good edition! As others pointed out, 'ß' is still used along with 'ss'. (Just a comment on the name 'sz' (doesn't help you with your decision)). People of my grandfather's generation still call it 'es-zett' while nowadays it is called 'scharf-es' (something like 's sharp' ;-) If it has to be spelled in capitals today it is written as 'SS' (e.g. 'GROSS') while in earlier days it was written 'GROSZ'). BTW: Do you know how original your original edition is? - I'm definitely not using Fraktur! Really no need to even with historical orthography. That's not what modern editions do in Germany... I was already leaning toward sticking with the old spellings, and now I'm even more inclined in that direction. This comment from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_spelling_reform_of_1996 also leads me in that direction: Classics are typically printed without changes, unless they are specific school editions. That is definitely not true. Classics are usually only printed in original spelling in historical critical editions. Text that are for sale and to be read by Germans today are nearly always modernized since the original looks unusual for us too. The decision is always to what extent it is being modernized. That brings another question to mind: What purpose is your publication intended for? Is it as a reference to the music, something to work with or just a matter of curiosity? I'm still interested in further opinions, if anyone else wants to chime in. One remark about capitalization (what I read about in one or more comments). Please keep it!! This has nothing to do with original vs. modern. The German language just has this somewhat unusual way of capitalizing. And besides a politically motivated to print everything lowercase (in the 70ies of the past century) there isn't any tendency towards changing this. Urs ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] TAN - Use of sz ligature: opinions?
This has been a fascinating discussion for me, and I'm glad I started it here, but I'm a little embarrassed to admit that my actual practical question is far less interesting than any of this. About five years ago, I put together a series of libretto booklets for Wagner's Ring operas, intended mostly as a means of providing an English translation for anglophone opera fans. After reviewing a variety of texts that were available to me, I settled upon one that I considered respectable, and that was that. My decision was based more on my estimation of the reliability of the source than on my own (limited) knowledge of German. A certain amount of rearranging was necessary for the format of the booklet, but the spellings I left alone. It looks like I might be going back to the file to redo some technical things in the booklets, so I wondered if it was worth revisiting the question. I know that some sources I've seen use no ß ligature at all. Perhaps that was just due to limitations of the typographical process, I don't know. It had been suggested to me that perhaps it was worth changing the spellings to make them more correct for current usage, but I'm now satisfied that to do so is perhaps a bad idea altogether and certainly not worth the extra effort it would require to do it right, so I intend to leave the spellings alone. If anyone here is sufficiently interested to look at the texts I used the first time, you can see them online at http://home.earthlink.net/~markdlew/shw/Ring.htm. -- On Feb 14, 2005, at 2:13 AM, Urs Liska wrote: *If* this modernized edition exclusively uses ss then it certainly is no good edition! As others pointed out, 'ß' is still used along with 'ss'. The one source I have here on my shelf is the current Schirmer vocal score of Walküre, it's a reprint of Schirmer's 1904 edition, which was itself based on Schott's 1899 English/German edition. This score uses ss exclusively, with no ß. On the other hand, it preserves all the ths. The Peters score -- which I don't have on hand, but I remember well -- does use the ß but converts th to t. BTW: Do you know how original your original edition is? Alas, my notes are incomplete. I have a vague recollection of the process I went through, and I know I could reconstruct my process if I had the access to the same library materials I used before, but I'm in a different city now. I can safely say that my original source was not intended as an exact rendering of Wagner's actual manuscript, but it was a standard text provided by a respectable publisher. Every text I can find online right has ß but no th, like Peters. I'm pretty sure I didn't type all the German from scratch (though I did type the Jameson translation), and I wouldn't have made spelling adjustments on my own unless I was following a source I considered reliable, so at this point I'm honestly not sure where my text came from. I do know that my intention at the time was to be true to Wagner and not modernize (hence, preserving th while most current sources use t). That brings another question to mind: What purpose is your publication intended for? Is it as a reference to the music, something to work with or just a matter of curiosity? Just a simple aid for English-speaking opera fans. As someone else noted on this thread, such people probably don't care a bit about details. mdl ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] TAN - Use of sz ligature: opinions?
Thanks to all for the advice. It definitely helps my thinking on this question. A few points I didn't make clear in the first post: - I'm not just citing a few texts; I'll be reproducing entire librettos. - I have two source texts available to me, one original and one modernized. My choice is pretty much just which of the two to use; I wouldn't have to go through and make the changes myself. I've got a list of the current official rules, and I think I could apply them properly, but that's more work than I care to do. It's been a while since I've looked at that second source text (I used the first one in an earlier edition) so I don't recall exactly how much is changed in it. I'm pretty sure that ALL ß's were changed to ss, and all th's are changed to t. There may have been other changes I didn't notice. - I'm definitely not using Fraktur! I was already leaning toward sticking with the old spellings, and now I'm even more inclined in that direction. This comment from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_spelling_reform_of_1996 also leads me in that direction: Classics are typically printed without changes, unless they are specific school editions. I'm still interested in further opinions, if anyone else wants to chime in. mdl P.S. I've been getting bounce messages from an address on tuebingen.netsurf.de. Is anyone else getting these? I'm not sure what's triggering them, and it just occurred to me to wonder if it's the Finale list. The message doesn't quote my Finale post back at me, but maybe it's still connected somehow? ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] TAN - Use of sz ligature: opinions?
Mark D Lew / 05.2.13 / 01:07 PM wrote: - I have two source texts available to me, one original and one modernized. My choice is pretty much just which of the two to use; I wouldn't have to go through and make the changes myself. Without understanding linguistic issues on this thread, I definitely vote for original. Back when I was a Christian, I used to hate modernized bible. It reduces the value to me. I now left Christianity and am believing in Miles :-) P.S. Anyone got any idea for my Rhythmic Notation hell by opening old Finale file? -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] TAN - Use of sz ligature: opinions?
On 13 Feb 2005 at 2:46, Mark D Lew wrote: Some time in the indefinite future I'm going to be editing a publication with some Wagner texts, and it will fall to me to decide whether to spell words with the sz ligature (ß) or with the modern ss spelling. I'm not sure where you're getting the sz from -- that is not what it is at all. If you look at it in German schrift (i.e., handwriting), it's quite clear that it's two s's, one the f-like version followed by a crook to a regular lower-case s. If anyone has opinions on the matter, or can point me to a good discussion of it on the Web, I'd love to hear it. (I would welcome opinions on the question of sz ligature in old texts generally or with regard to Wagner specifically.) Retain the original orthography, especially if you don't actually speak German and understand the rules (whether the old ones or the new ones). They aren't complicated to learn, but you do have to know where the syllable breaks are (for compound words). Also, retain the original capitalization. Most contemporary quotations I've seen use the modern spelling, but I kind of like the authenticity of preserving the older spelling. I'm not well educated on the question, though, so I'm seeking advice from others who know better than I do. I'm not so much interested in a yes or no answer as getting a feel for what the historical background is, what considerations of context go into making the decision, how it will be perceived by readers, etc. For what it's worth, the target audience of my publication would be English-speaking opera fans most of whom don't know much German. To those people, it won't make a lick of difference which one you use! -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
