Re: 19th-cent. accidental notation

[Luca Rossetto Casel]

Il 19/02/2013 15:13, Urs Liska ha scritto:
> I think that it is especially important to give the interested user 
> the _possibility_ to know as exactly as possible what has been done to 
> the score.

Me too. As I wrote in my last message, I find fair explain the editorial 
approach and give account of the interventions in a note to the score.

> When I make an edition I can't really know which aspects may once 
> become important to a user of the edition. Sometimes small issues that 
> may seem totally neglectable prove to be a key observation for 
> important interpretations.

In my /Enea nel Lazio/ edition, I chose to report every intervention of 
some extent in a separated volume of critical notes, so to put the 
reader in conditions to know exactly how the principal manuscript (as 
well as the other sources, too) did look.

> But OTOH it is impossible to make a perfect edition. [...]

Again, in cases of similar complexity I find quite necessary to acclude 
a critical report to the score.

> Now to the editorial problem (we are talking about): Of course the New 
> Edition marks all editor's addition typographically. But a) printing 
> staccato dots and accents smaller than normal is a quite unnoticeable 
> style. And b) (much more important) the New Edition takes the 
> manuscript and the original edition as its main sources. So additions 
> by the original engraver are taken as _original material_ and thus not 
> marked in the New Edition. While I realized (through the study of the 
> manuscript) that the original edition presumably made a lot of 
> problematic additions this isn't visible in the New Edition at all. I 
> can only hope that this fact is described in the Critical Report 
> (which I haven't inspected yet). But as the Critical Report isn't 
> actually part of the books and only available in some libraries, the 
> information in it is really buried quite far away.

THe approach you describe here is the one I personally chose for my 
edition. By the way, I also managed - I think - to print smaller, but 
distinguable, scripts quite well! I slightly increased their distance 
from the noteheads to give the scripts a clearly, more visible 
appearence; I also adopted a quite large spacing to make all as clear as 
possible, even with a quite small font.
Regarding the problem of the Critica Report, I can see it's somehow not 
immediately visible - or even note immediately reachable, as you point 
out. But I think it's anyway the better compromise... in a printed 
score. Providing the edition in a digital format, as an interactive pdf 
(or other), it would be possible display the variants of all the adopted 
sources on our score, making every change visible.
It's becoming a common practice in literarature studies, why not apply 
to music philology?
As an example, see this project related to Metastasio's works:
http://www.progettometastasio.it/pietrometastasio/

> [...] While I'm quite happy with the solutions and know that we don't 
> change the musical text, I can't know if the (originally used) 
> reminder accidentals might become meaningful to someone who later 
> studies the edition. On the other hand we decided to mark the 
> accidentals that we identified as musically wrong by parentheses. (BTW 
> any idea how one could highlight the _emendation_ of an accidental (or 
> any other grob) typographically???)

What about inserting the emended grob in a smaller format put above the 
relative note, enclosed in brackets or inserted in a box, or a 
circle...? This inusual style should be described in the introduction to 
the score, of course...

I thank you for adding your point of view, I find it very interesting!
All the best,

    Luca


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