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By Esther Criscuola de Laix
The phrase musica ficta (literally, “fictitious music,” “false music”) comes up in almost every critical edition of medieval or renaissance music ever published. Originally, the term referred to notes that did not fit within the hexachordal system devised by Guido d’Arezzo in the eleventh century and used as the standard music-theoretical system in Western Europe for almost six centuries following. However, when editors of medieval and early modern music use this term, it is specifically to refer to the means and practices of translating into notation the altered pitches that were not expressly notated in written music—the ones early performers would have applied on their own initiative, but which might not automatically occur to modern performers. This article provides a summary of A-R’s house style and recommended practices for notating musica ficta.
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March 15, 2023Read More
By Alex Widstrand
In previous UnderScore posts we have dealt with the broad topic of accidentals, both in terms of tailoring the policy governing accidental usage to the needs of a particular source and more generally how to balance form and function in accidental application. This third installment focuses on cautionary (or “courtesy”) accidentals: those pitch inflections not strictly necessary by standard notation conventions, but that are nonetheless useful in dispelling ambiguity. Since the question of what is or is not musically ambiguous is quite subjective, this post, while by no means exhaustive, offers broad guidance on best practices for deploying cautionary accidentals in a critical edition.
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November 13, 2020Read More
By Pamela Whitcomb
Most publishers have a house style—a set of rules and guidelines defining the publisher’s preferences for spelling, punctuation, numbers, dates, abbreviations, bibliographic citations, and so on. A house style usually starts with a commonly accepted, publicly available style guide and a dictionary. The publisher’s house style adds an additional layer of rules for situations in which more than one option is acceptable in the style guide or dictionary or when specialized contexts require more specific guidelines. For music publishers, the house style will also include a set of rules for notational elements. But why all the fuss about these niggling little rules? Why not just let the author’s choices stand?
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July 27, 2018Read More
By Esther Criscuola de Laix
I’d like to talk a bit about pencils, those intriguing sticks of wood, metal, rubber, and a “pigment core” of graphite or something else. In this digital age, not much is done with pencils anymore, because not much is done with paper anymore. But when I sit down to copyedit the music portion of an author’s manuscript, the first thing I do is pull out my pencil pouch. The colored pencils it contains are among the most essential tools of my editorial trade, and each color is used for a specific purpose. Each editor’s individual markup practices vary, but there are three colors that we on the editorial staff at A-R Editions all use pretty much the same way: red, green, and blue.
