NOTATIO

Helen Thomson, harpist with the BBC Scottish SO, has posted this pic of a part page on Twitter with the comment ‘Looking forward to playing Big Ben in London tonight.’ I thought the style of hand copying, possibly from the 1920s, but maybe much later, might be of interest to members of this forum and could invite comment.

The SSO are due to perform this piece, in which the harp sometimes prominently plays Westminster chimes, at the Proms in London tonight. (They were also there last night with an Alpine programme including a piece by Georg Friedrich Haas for 4 Alphorns and orchestra and Strauss's Alpine Symphony complete with 21 horns [12 off-stage, 9 on the platform].)

I like the cueing style a lot as well.

I think this is from the 1950s. (Stainer & Bell's current address is N3, so that might be some indication.) I've seen similar scores for BBC Singers music from the 50s. It's got to be from a time when it was feasible to print the header and footer with handwritten music.

benwiggy wrote: ↑31 Jul 2018, 21:18 … … It's got to be from a time when it was feasible to print the header and footer with handwritten music.

I thought the header and footer could conceivably be a later addition to an earlier copied part. The full post code is quite modern, as they weren't around in my youth - just N2 without the rest until at least into the 1960s for London (rural Scottish ones were not in existence until the 1970s). Then it was a while before people habitually used them.

This part would not have met Arnstein's cueing standards. Note the penciled division of the rests and verbal cues on the first line that had to be written in by the player. Then there is the 63 measure rest without a cue. This was typical of the under-cued parts from other copying offices that we sometimes had to correct. I've never seen cues bracketed like that. Very ugly.

I hate to be negative, but that's a bad part. This and a project I worked last week where I had to pull out some old Hollywood parts to recopy are harsh reminders that things weren't always better in the "good old days".