Re: Mandatory or a cautionary accidental?

[Urs Liska]

Am 22.10.2013 10:33, schrieb Simon Bailey:
> On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 10:12 AM, Urs Liska <address@hidden> wrote:
> > thanks for your opinion.
> > Obviously it boils down to the statement that leaving the reminder sharp for
> > the gis' is impractical/impolite but not wrong.
> i think david actually made the statement exactly the other way
> around. omitting the reminder sharp may confuse a musician, especially
> with a forced natural at the beginning of the bar.

Rereading David's post I realize I haven't completely understood him yet.
First he says it's mandatory then cautionary, responding to different 
parts of my message.
So obviously I'm still not really clear about it.

> > See the actual situation in the attached image. The gis' is on the third
> > beat in the lower voice of the right hand.
> > It is clear to me that there _has_ to be a sharp, the question is only if it
> > will be a cautionary or a mandatory accidental.
> > And resulting from your opinions I will make it a cautionary one.
> this is a case where i'd normally play a gis, then realise there's a
> natural at the beginning of the measure, then become confused and then
> try to work out what's correct from situational analysis.

Exactly, and there's also the natural in the vocal line, which makes it 
even more confusing.

> that's not
> conducive to sight-reading (not that i could even think of playing
> this on a piano, i'm a monophonic trombone guy). when i'm typesetting,
> i follow the sight-reading rule: if it _could_ be confusing, then add
> cautionary accidentals (in parentheses). i've sat in a rehearsal where
> the polite cautionary (non-parenthetical) accidentals really confused
> the guy sat next to me -- he started playing fisis in a d major
> passage, because the fis had a mandatory accidental. when the error of
> his ways was pointed out to him, he ranted about the engraver and
> crossed out all forced accidentals in his part... (which gave us more
> problems further down the line, but that's a different story).
>
> i always try to get parts which are as least confusing as possible.
> when re-engraving, this may mean moving away from how it was
> originally engraved, making the typesetting work somewhat more
> editorial (why else would we be re-engraving though?).

Actually I _do_ have the editor's hat and not the engraver's on in this 
situation.
As a performer I know that I want a sharp in that place.
But as an editor I have to decide whether I am adding a cautionary 
accidental or whether I am 'correcting an error' of the original edition ;-)

BTW we decided to use cautionary accidentals _without_ parentheses in 
this edition, because
a) the original edition did so too
b) we are heavily modifying the OE's decision in this respect which would
c) result in a score completely flooded with parentheses, which wouldn't 
help _anyone_.
When we add missing mandatory accidentals they are parenthesized, however.
We know this differs from general practice, but anything else would be 
soo ugly - and of course we have documented it sufficiently.

Best
Urs

> the best reward
> is when musicians can play on-sight, without any questions occurring.
> be nice to your musicians with the music, and they'll be nice to your
> music. :)
>
> regards,
> sb