Typsetting a large MS of mine from 1994/5?
Posted: 11 Jan 2017, 20:57
First some background:
I received generous grants in 1994 (or maybe 93) from both the then Scottish Arts Council and also two arts-supporting trust funds to write the piece in question, which I duly did in manuscript full score. However, once complete (1995) I abandoned the piece, because of adverse comments on the libretto (my own) from my then wife and also from the stage director with whom I'd hoped to work. Now, for the first time in 22 years, I've taken an idle look at the score and it strikes me as hugely, hugely better than I'd remembered, so I'm now full of enthusiasm for and belief in the piece. Fashions and tastes change… What's more, it's a potential vocal and dramatic tour de force for a suitable mezzo in the title role - if she can manage all the strength of a dramatic mezzo, plus the coloratura agility of a lyric one!
Anyway, it is a three act piece consisting of a bit over two hours of music, on 500 pages of A3 manuscript, for normal large orchestra, 4 principal sung roles, 5 subsidiary roles (as a vocal quintet whose members are materialistic young urban professionals in the outer acts and peasants of a remote community in the middle one) and full mixed chorus - plus dancers and supernumeraries for a ballet representing a stock market crash to begin Act III.
My manuscript layout is fairly conventional, as is the notation. However, I can see many hazards in trying to engrave it in Finale. The triple wind (plus tenor sax) have all sorts of stave layout. ie The three flutes may sometimes be sharing a stave, or may be on two staves either as 1, 2 then 3 or as 1, then 2, 3 or on three separates staves. The 4 horns may be in any of the various possible permutations on 1, 2, 3, or 4 staves, the strings are sub-divided in a whole host of different ways both tutti and solo &c &c. Similar things happen with the chorus and the vocal quintet. Mostly, the chorus women are not on S A staves, but on one stave with continually changing divisions into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 parts, almost on a beat by beat basis (this can be seen in some Italian opera scores), with the libretto above as well as below the stave if necessary.
In my manuscript I never need more than 28 staves to a system, but I can see my needing more than twice that number in Finale (though not too many staves in the final layout of the full score).
How to set about engraving this monster? Any advice about how I might best proceed would be welcome.
I received generous grants in 1994 (or maybe 93) from both the then Scottish Arts Council and also two arts-supporting trust funds to write the piece in question, which I duly did in manuscript full score. However, once complete (1995) I abandoned the piece, because of adverse comments on the libretto (my own) from my then wife and also from the stage director with whom I'd hoped to work. Now, for the first time in 22 years, I've taken an idle look at the score and it strikes me as hugely, hugely better than I'd remembered, so I'm now full of enthusiasm for and belief in the piece. Fashions and tastes change… What's more, it's a potential vocal and dramatic tour de force for a suitable mezzo in the title role - if she can manage all the strength of a dramatic mezzo, plus the coloratura agility of a lyric one!
Anyway, it is a three act piece consisting of a bit over two hours of music, on 500 pages of A3 manuscript, for normal large orchestra, 4 principal sung roles, 5 subsidiary roles (as a vocal quintet whose members are materialistic young urban professionals in the outer acts and peasants of a remote community in the middle one) and full mixed chorus - plus dancers and supernumeraries for a ballet representing a stock market crash to begin Act III.
My manuscript layout is fairly conventional, as is the notation. However, I can see many hazards in trying to engrave it in Finale. The triple wind (plus tenor sax) have all sorts of stave layout. ie The three flutes may sometimes be sharing a stave, or may be on two staves either as 1, 2 then 3 or as 1, then 2, 3 or on three separates staves. The 4 horns may be in any of the various possible permutations on 1, 2, 3, or 4 staves, the strings are sub-divided in a whole host of different ways both tutti and solo &c &c. Similar things happen with the chorus and the vocal quintet. Mostly, the chorus women are not on S A staves, but on one stave with continually changing divisions into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 parts, almost on a beat by beat basis (this can be seen in some Italian opera scores), with the libretto above as well as below the stave if necessary.
In my manuscript I never need more than 28 staves to a system, but I can see my needing more than twice that number in Finale (though not too many staves in the final layout of the full score).
How to set about engraving this monster? Any advice about how I might best proceed would be welcome.