Proof Readers & General Feedback

[LadyIslay]

Hello!

With the most excellent help and advice from folks in the IMSLP chat room (Have you visited? It's fun!), I have transcribed one of the IMSLP's documents, a vocal score of the Vivaldi "Gloria" (RV589) to create a clean imprint suitable for duplication. The document I used can be found here: http://imslp.org/wiki/Gloria_in_D_major ... Antonio%29.

I have uploaded my draft document here: http://www.islay.ca/Gloria.pdf. I am very eager to receive feedback onk the general layout of the document, the piano reduction (I'm not a piano player, so I have no idea how playable the reduction is. The reduction is largely transcribed from the Westermann edition, but I moved the clef of some of the lines because it seemed kind of silly the way Westermann had things), and of course... proof reading. When I am finished the entire document, it will have a proper introductory page with a copyright notice for the translation and information on the source document.

Thank-you in advance for anyone able to help me with this project. Cheers!

Islay

[Choralia]

Regarding proof-reading, I have developed automatic tools that can identify even one different note or syllable in the vocal parts of your files with respect to my own files for "Gloria" RV 589 (I have digitized already two versions from other commercial editions). I just need your MIDI files to feed my tools. My files have been checked already against others using the same automatic means, so I'm pretty sure that they are error-free.

Max

[LadyIslay]

That would be most excellent! I've uploaded a midi file here: http://www.islay.ca/Gloria.mid
Do you have separate files for each momvent? I might need to split things up. I started out that way, but for formating and such, I combined them all to one file.

[Choralia]

No problem with the MIDI, I can split it myself. I'll contact you via PM, probably next week. I cannot perform the comparison now because I'm on vacation, using a laptop, and files for this "Gloria" are on my desktop PC at home.

Please note that there are two major versions of this "Gloria", resulting from either Casella's or Malipiero's interpretation of the autograph manuscript. The typical differences associated to such versions are listed here:

http://www.choralia.net/vv0105en.htm

So you may start checking these points, where differences are related to such different versions existing.

Max

[LadyIslay]

Thank-you again for your help. I'm aware of the two different 'versions' out there, which is why I went through the trouble of transcribing it: I couldn't find a reproducable copy of the version I wanted to use. Interestingly, I also found a fairly significant (8-16 bars... I can't remember) difference in the "Laudamus te", though this may have been an error on the part of the midi file I used as a starting point for the transcription.

I look forward to hearing from you... have a great vacation!

[coulonnus]

I am very eager to receive feedback onk the general layout of the document, the piano reduction

I am too lazy to proofread it but here are a few remarks:

Nowadays there is a preference for noting 8th notes and shorter in the voice parts with beams AKA ligatures instead of distinct notes and flags. See p.14 of this document: http://www.icking-music-archive.org/lis ... tation.pdf

Could the figures of the bass be better centered with the corresponding notes?

There are a few note/accidental collisions e.g. p.12 meas. 32.

There is a strange extraneous note at the last measure of p.14

The upbeat of Laudamus Te p.20 should be meas#0 instead of meas#1. The Kreuznacher Diakonie put the right numbering so your edition won't agree with that one.

Some vertical alignments are strange e.g. p.20 meas.11, l.h.

p.76: align the first rest with the first notes of r.h. and grant the correct horizontal spacing to this rest.

[OwainEvans]

My first post; I'm too lazy to proofread it also. Some general points are:

• a) Piano reduction I'd reduce to 90% so it looks more like a working vocal score and this will also solve a lot of note clashes with music spacing later.
  b) Engraving rule: notes on middle lines of staves in vocal music have an upward stem direction because they collide with the lyrics. Unless it looks really silly it's a good rule to stick with.
  e.g. p.2, b.17–18. This occurs a lot in D Maj/B Min pieces because D in bass clef and B in treble clef are on the middle lines. I don't think this rule is observed in editions I've seen.
  c) Also p. 2 b17–18 I'd not break the beams throughout the score, especially between a word.
  d) P.12 b.31–32: clashes of sharps in pf part.
  e) I'd not use slurs where it's obvious there's a melisma e.g. P.12 b.35 Tenor "pax___", P16 looks way over the top in my opinion.
  d) P.27 Propter Magnam Gloria, The word setting is "prop - ter mag - nam" not "pro - pter ma - gnam" and I can only think it's put this way because the p and t are meant to sound together and g and n also, or they are sometimes silent.
  e) P.28 b.5 1st chord clash.
  f) P35 b43 Last chord clashes with a rest.
  g) P49 b.16 bar number clash on Alto, b.17 "Uni" too close to B-flat.

General layout does look clean.

[pml]

Owain Evans,

in reply to some of your points, which are well meant:

a) professional repetiteurs will work from undersized reductions, but the ones I’ve spoken to regarding my own piano reductions don’t generally like the practice (and there’s a prominent school of vocal reductions where the piano parts are in fact oversize, or else it’s the choral parts which are reduced to the 90% size).

b) as an engraver myself, this is one supposed rule for vocal music which I find ugly and off-putting; I’m much more inclined to follow instrumental practice for stem directions and to move the lyrics on a system-by-system basis to avoid collisions — which is what you are obliged to do for notes going well below the stave, or divided parts in any case.

d) the rules of text setting of lyrics do not follow the rules of hyphenation, and your advice of “prop — ter” and “mag — nam” is slightly unhelpful for singers in the case of “propter” but plainly wrong in the case of “magnam”, because in the Italianate pronunciation of Latin that Vivaldi would have envisaged, the letters gn together form the phoneme [nʲ] rather than two separate consonantal sounds of [g] and [n] (which you might find in Mozart, by comparison).

(Apologies in advance to others who have been expecting proof-reading work from me: I’ve been rather too busy to do anything on the “gratis” pile. P.)

[coulonnus]

I have begun to proofread it, relying on the Kreuznacher-Diakonie version in case of doubt.

p.2 meas.11, r.h. Why is beat 4 not like beat 3?

p.9 meas 3 r.h.last chord. The D is too low for a pianist's hand. Play the D an octave above.

p.10 meas. 18 r.h. last chord: D should be sharp. Perhaps not everybody will agree but at other similar polyphonic passages you made the right choice to notate accidentals at both parts when one repeats an accidental note after the other. But use the same habit throughout this score.

p.11 meas. 25 r.h. The E will be too low for much pianists. Use the E above.

p.12 mes 32 rh : last chord: I guess you mean E sharp.

meas 34 last chord rh: change G into D

p.13 meas 39, rh: put the sharp on the first G of the upper part, not the second one

meas 42 rh last chord: change C sharp into F sharp

p 16 meas 63 lh: the common practice is to put a regular flat sign (courtesy acccidental) instead a parenthesized flat.

p 17 mes 73 rh last chord. play the upper G instead for a pianist's hand.

Perhaps whoever is not familiar with such a proofreading job will find the tone of my message offensive. Please let me know if I must continue.

[LadyIslay]

I wrote a lengthly reply last night, but apparently I took so long typing it, I had to sign back in to post it, and I missed that detail. Thankfully tonight, I copied this text before I hit 'submit', or I would have woken up tomorrow to discover another lengthly message gone!

Thank-you, everyone, for your kind attention to this document. I really appreciate ALL your comments. Last night, I finally had a bit of time to start going through your suggestions and making modifications. Here are some updates/replies:

coulonnus: With regards to beaming notes together, I see what you mean. I read your linked document and looked at some modern publications, so I agree it is certainly the modern standard. I just don't know if I want to go through the entire document at this point and rebeam everything. Personally, I like notes that aren't the same words to be unbeamed, but that's just me.

I went through and edited all of the custom expressions for the figured bass (100+, as some were duplicated when I merged the document together from separate files) to try and centre them better. They were set up to be centred on the notehead, but apparently that means the 'handle' for dragging the item was centred, not the item itself.

I fixed the specific random note and collisions you mentioned (plus a few more). I've also respaced the music using the built-in feature in Finale, so hopefully that fixed some other horizontal spacing issues.

With regards to the measure numbers... good catch! I found some other mistakes in my file, too, and fixed those. THANK-YOU!

OwainEvans: I don't think I'm going to resize any systems at this point. Things pretty much fit, and I really don't want to have to go through the entire editing process again. Plus, I'd rather create a single document rather than one for choresters and one for accompanists. Reducing the piano part would make the figures bass even tiner and probably make my own accompanist complain about his eyesight. Reducing the vocal line (as suggested by another poster) is likewise less ideal, as I'm personally working with seniors, so the bigger, the better.

Thanks for your note about the stem direction. I agree it can make the lyrics easier to read. Unfortunately, Finale doesn't seem to have a way of automatically doing this: you can either fix the stems all up, all down or automatic. There is a plug-in that will flip stems on the midline to the direction of the preceeding note, but this will only fix some instances and not all. At this point, I'm not sure if I want to go through the whole thing and fix each instance manually, but we'll see how much time I have on the weekend. Given the current spacing, I don't think there is a collision issue with the lyrics, though.

I pretty much copied the beaming from the source document, not thinking that it would be incorrect. I may have to go through and fix, though again, it would be very time consuming, so we'll have to see.

Slurs for melismas are pretty standard in vocal music these days, in fact, if I'm working with a score without them (usually ones from CPDL), I often find that I need to write them in, as a lack of a slur might indicate that the note should be rearticulated with a glottle or soft onset.

The "pro-pter" and "ma-gnam" are correct in the score. They match the source document, and they're better, visually, for singers anwyay. I wish more words were written like this in the lyrics, actually (tru-mpet vs. trum-pet). Linking the consonent with the next syllable creates a visual reminder to sing the VOWEL and helps the line/bel canto style. In this particular case, it is also a visual cue for the pronunciation: "pro" and "prop" are both words in English, and the word "pro" in English is much closer to the Latin prounciation than is "prop". The same can be said for "ma-gnam", as I really don't want "mag" (rhymns with "nag") and "nam" (like Vietnam).

Does 28, bar 5 look better now? I'm not sure how this should look. I fixed up all the other collisions you mentioned. THANK-YOU!

pml - Thanks so much for your feedback, both here and in the chat room! I haven't really ever prepared anything this large before, and I'm certainly not familiar with the details of engraving. Music Theory classes seem so far away, and they certainly didn't go over the finer points of preparing scores.

coulonnus - I'm not offended by your tone at all... I am SO thankful for another pair of eyes. I'm especially thankful for the spacing/reach feedback. I'm not a piano player, so mostly, I just went with whatever Westermann had in his edition (unless it looked totally stupid).

I'm not sure what to do with this one, though: "p.2 meas.11, r.h. Why is beat 4 not like beat 3? ", as there is no measure 11 or 11th measure on page 2.

"p.10 meas. 18 r.h. last chord: D should be sharp. Perhaps not everybody will agree but at other similar polyphonic passages you made the right choice to notate accidentals at both parts when one repeats an accidental note after the other. But use the same habit throughout this score. " - the other instances are mistakes... Finale doesn't carry accidentals over layers, so you need to put in the accidental for each layer and then (if you want to) hide it, which is what I remembered to do in this instance, but in bar 16. I agree that they should all be the same, but I don't know which I should fix.

"p.11 meas. 25 r.h. The E will be too low for much pianists. Use the E above." - I agree. This is copied right from the Westermann score. I'm reluctant to put it up an octave, as it will then become the highest sounding note on the first beat of the bar, and the 'b' will be a much better cue for the tenor's entry. What do you think of putting it into the left-hand part an octave lower?

"meas 34 last chord rh: change G into D" and "meas 42 rh last chord: change C sharp into F sharp" - but then there will be no root in the chord... I can't remember my voice-leading rules: is a 5th preferrable here? Sorry... I didn't add the figured bass to the second movement, so you probably don't know that these are, apparently, supposed to be 6|5 chords.

I've attempted to remove the courtesey accidentals (parenthetical or not). I can re-add them later with a plug in if everyone says I should. Sometimes, they make me think we musicians are getting lazy.

I'm uploading a new copy: http://www.islay.ca/Gloria2.pdf
Errors I know I still need to fix are the missing figured bass in the second movement (apparently I forgot this altogether... I've added about half now).

Bless you all for your help!

[coulonnus]

I'm not sure what to do with this one, though: "p.2 meas.11, r.h. Why is beat 4 not like beat 3? ", as there is no measure 11 or 11th measure on page 2.

Oops it's page 1! I'll have a look at the next pages.

[coulonnus]

p.11 meas. 25 r.h. The E will be too low for much pianists.

Well, leave it where it is, and a light pedalling will do the job to prolonge the E!

meas 34 last chord rh: change G into D" and "meas 42 rh last chord:
change C sharp into F sharp"

Well I don't want to go on too long and I let experts complete this.

p26 meas 124 rh: remove the unnecessary flats (former flats to far
ahead to justify courtesy accidentals)

last meas (and many others): "fill" the rh chord with a D

p 27, end of meas 2 and 3: I think the average pianist won't handle
the "hand clashes" correctly unless he is familiar with the 1600's organ
repertoire. I suggest you simplify by removing the last half-note
(B at meas 2) of rh and removing the tie at lh. I don't think your choir expects a 100% accurate transcription

p29 meas 9 rh: correct the 2nd note of the 2nd beam.

p48 Start with first meas = meas 1!
meas 4 (with your numbering) make the first chord a B major chord. Off topic: the rh realization of the Kantorei version is funny!

mes 6 (and some others) correct the vertical alignment.

p. 50 meas 24 rh last chord F should be sharp

p 55 meas 1 lh review 1rst note

p 58 1rst meas, lh there a too many sharps.

I wish you a constructive work with your choir

[KGill]

Thanks for your note about the stem direction. I agree it can make the lyrics easier to read. Unfortunately, Finale doesn't seem to have a way of automatically doing this: you can either fix the stems all up, all down or automatic. There is a plug-in that will flip stems on the midline to the direction of the preceeding note, but this will only fix some instances and not all.

Which version are you using? In mine (2005a), at least, it is rather simple to fix selected stems up or down using the Mass Mover tool (i.e., highlighting individual notes with it), and I think you can accomplish the same thing with the general selection tool in later versions, though I am not nearly as familiar with them.

[kalliwoda]

I am using Finale 2009 (but had Finale since 1989)
You are right, the "stem-direction on the middle staff-line" plugin seems to have its own set of funny rules - not very useful.

Selecting individual notes is really slow (with mass-mover tool or with the special tools in v.2009).
Faster in my experience is the speedy note entry: you can just forward from one note to the next with the arrow keys and hit the "L" to toggle stem-direction. Its similar in the simple note entry, but you cannot jump entire bars with "shift" arrow.
Still, its not an automatic global change.

[LadyIslay]

coulonnus "last meas (and many others): "fill" the rh chord with a D" - I'm going to leave this, as the full score doesn't have it, and I listened to my "Academy of Ancient Music" recording, and it doesn't seem to have it, either (although, it also doesn't have an organist playing in this movement).

"p 27, end of meas 2 and 3: I think the average pianist won't handle
the "hand clashes"" - Interestingly, I picked up a full score version of the Westermann edition today on an inter-library loan, and for this momvent, the Basso Continuo has a simplification that I think I'll use.

Faster in my experience is the speedy note entry: you can just forward from one note to the next with the arrow keys and hit the "L" to toggle stem-direction. Its similar in the simple note entry, but you cannot jump entire bars with "shift" arrow.
Still, its not an automatic global change.

I'm familiar with this method. You can even do it in the "Simple Entry" mode if the note you want to modify is active. I was looking for a global way to do this, though. Going through the entire thing could take a very long time!

Again, I can't thank all of you folks enough for your feedback. I'm very excited about getting the full score from the Vancouver Public Library today. If I have time at work over the next three weeks (possible, though not likely), I will scan it for upload here. Interestingly, it is not typeset. The full score is in someone's (the editor's, perhaps?) handwriting.