A few weeks ago I found this in the archive, and was very happy to see it. This is absolutely one of my favorite pieces in the world. I learned it at the International Baroque Institute at Longy about 5 years ago, playing harpsichord continuo with a wonderful violinist named Joseph Tan, now studying and performing in Amsterdam I think. We did it both in the harpsichord class with Arthur Haas coaching, and in violin class with Manfredo Kramer. I nearly flipped out at the magical enharmonic change and the harmony around it (bars 115, 121, and 127 by Bernhard's numbering. And BTW that should clearly be a g# in bar 114, by comparison with the other 2 times the same thing happens). Another year at IBIL I found/learned another great piece with Joseph, Westhoff's "La Guerra" from a handwriten copy by Reinhard Goebel. That led to this electronically published edition: http://www.sheetmusicnow.com/ (search for Westhoff).
Which brings us back to typesetting. Bernhard Lang wrote > Tony Kitchen wrote: > > I know that many baroque composers were very adventurous hamonically, > > but these seem to be simple errors, involving the incorrect > > accidental. > > In modern sens of reading surely. But since my edition does not try to > describe music of the 17th century with the language of the 19th century > (or from whatever era) I would rather tell the way of reading it as being > incorrect :-) > There's no question about what that note should be, and it's notated correctly according to the old convention. As to whether that was the right choice, there is no "right" way, no absolute answer. But FWIW here's my answer. I used to take Bernhard's position, out of respect for the composer's intentions. Then at one point a very accomplished violinist was reading one of my settings and complained that the juxtaposition of modern typesetting with the old-style accidental convention was very confusing. The more I thought about it the more I tended to agree. After all, by using computer typesetting tools one has already changed one aspect of the language from the original. But there is also a more practical, less philosophical reason for modernizing the accidentals: Even though modern accidentals are less logical than old-style, we've all been trained modern. My main objective in all my typesetting is to make scores for performance by modern humans, not scholarship. So now I'm pretty "hard over" on this: I always modernize accidentals in scores I typeset. But clearly if someone's typesetting objectives are different, he may choose a different path. And I respect that, as long as he recognizes that he's not making a modern player's life any easier. The good news is that if the typesetter has used MusiXTeX or PMX and chooses to make the source available, everyone can be satisfied. The switch from old to new accidentals is usually as simple as adding \relativeaccidentals or "Ar". --Don Simons _______________________________________________ TeX-music mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sunsite.dk/mailman/listinfo/tex-music
