critical notes

By A-R's house editors

This is the third in a series of UnderScore posts on word division in lyrics within music, covering syllabification guidelines for German. Please note that the rules given here may differ in small details from guidelines given in style manuals not primarily concerned with sung texts.

By Alex Widstrand

Even for experienced music editors, constructing critical notes often poses a challenge: how do we describe elements of music notation in a way that is concise, consistent, and can be easily parsed by a reader assumed to have access only to the edition in front of them and not the material on which the edition is based? In most cases, this question is easily addressed by recognizing the four principal types of emended source readings and the appropriate “formula” to use for critical notes reporting each type. The general guidelines presented below—not comprehensive, but broadly applicable to the most common situations in which a critical note is needed—give an overview of A-R’s preferred critical note syntax as a starting point for prospective Recent Researches editors.

By A-R's house editors

This post lays out some general rules for the notation of triplets and other tuplets within A-R’s house style, illustrated by examples from our volumes.

By A-R's house editors

The category of grace notes includes various types of ornamental notation: appoggiaturas, acciaccaturas, coulés, slides, Nachschläge, and many others. This article covers guidelines on styling and formatting them within your edition.

By Esther Criscuola de Laix

Editions of operas, operettas, oratorios, masques, musical theater pieces, and other dramatic or semidramatic pieces include a number of elements unique to dramatic music, from act and scene labeling to stage directions. This post offers guidelines on how to format and present these elements within a critical edition.

By A-R's house editors

This is the second in a series of UnderScore posts on word division in lyrics within music, covering syllabification guidelines for Spanish and French. Please note that the rules given here may differ in small details from guidelines given in style manuals not primarily concerned with sung texts.

By A-R's house editors

In editing vocal music, one of the most important concerns is, of course, the words being sung. This series of posts aims to clarify A-R’s recommended best practices on word division within music, including rules specific to various languages commonly encountered in the Western art music tradition. This post begins the series with a brief introduction, followed by rules for Latin and Italian.

By Alexander Dean

A “critical” edition is concerned with faithfulness to a source, and its authenticity, along with the probity of the editors involved, is bound to an understanding that the source material has been adequately and conscientiously accounted for. But any source will present elements that fall into a gray area, not at once sliding into their place in even the most carefully constructed pre-transcription editorial methodology. Prime among these are layout-specific elements: those numbers, directives, and graphical notations that serve in manuscripts and early music prints to guide readers and performers safely from one page to the next. Since, in the translation to a modern edition, the layout will necessarily change, one might be tempted to dismiss any such marking out of hand, along with the source page numbers and other obvious candidates for tacit removal. While this is not a bad rule of thumb, at least to start out, each type of notation will need to be evaluated on its own.

By A-R's house editors

In general, all the rhythmic values in an A-R Recent Researches edition should be transcribed from their source in a 1:1 ratio. That said, it is almost always necessary to make some small graphical adjustments to both notes and rests from most sources. Here is a quick guide to A-R house style for the graphical presentation of notes and rests.

By A-R's house editors

There are four principal factors in determining score order in Renaissance vocal music: modern choral score order, defined, in descending order, as soprano, alto, tenor, and bass (SATB); voice names employed by the original manuscript or print; clefs assigned to the original parts; and the vocal ranges of the parts. Because of the prevalence of modern choral score order, all editions should begin with this as the guiding editorial rule: voices are arranged in standard choral order from highest to lowest.