NOTATIO

Usually all singers will receive a copy of the complete vocal score, which will then be used for vocal coaching and rehearsals with a pianist. There are other approaches that are sometimes used eg I think for Mahler 2 the chorus just receives a choir part for the final bit of the symphony, but in ge...

I think Gould is right. I've used both notations without comment from the timpanist (I am not a timpanist myself), so I don't think it matters very much which you use.

The first thing I would like to ask is to define "art song", what is that? It's a slightly awkward term, but Art Songs are usually understood to mean songs for solo voice and piano suitable for classically trained singers, much the same as German Lieder or French Mélodies . The term can a...

… … … The only instrument written in alto clef, actually.… … … The alto trombone, a standard instrument of the classical and now actively revived as a modern (ie not just period) instrument is always written in the alto clef. As a consequence, many tenor trombone parts for, say, Schubert masses als...

I don't know if this is or is not a help, but these screenshots show how I presented such things in a 45 minute collection of songs I wrote during Covid lockdown, with particular reference to a compact cycle of short poems by Kipling (as a ‘true’ 15 minute cycle rather than separate songs). Although...

(and a quick question, there's a C in the piano left hand between two C# - 3rd measure beat 1 - but with no cautionary... is it a missing cautionary or a missing #? It is a missing cautionary… I'm away from home at present, and if things go to plan, not due back until about 8 December. I hope to ma...

As it happens, since 2020 and Covid lockdown, I've written about 80 minutes worth of art songs, long and short, one voice and two, all with piano. The screenshot shows my invariable indent. Later systems have no stave names if solo and abbreviated voice names if duet (but nothing for the piano). Thi...

Certainly the whole of the passage shown could be in the treble clef. In the 1960s I did a little work with a commercial music arranger who refused to use the alto clef and who wrote entire viola parts in the treble. The session musicians had no trouble reading what he wrote when an awkward copyist ...

Something like that, yes.

I think this depends largely on the individual score and on how much the instrumentation varies from system to system. In my own orchestral scores, whose orchestration tends to vary considerably from system to system, I aim to hide all empty staves except where doing so will leave too few staves, wh...