Style Advice for new project

[mburns]

Hi all,

Having graduated, I've been given an opportunity to do some engraving work through my uni as part of a research project, creating editions of some books of quintets from ~1730s French parts. The uni is mostly concerned about accuracy/editorial stuff, which I'll leave mostly to others, but otherwise there's not much direction in terms of style, it seems to mostly be up to me. Since this is my first project of this scale, I wondered if people had any advice for building up a cohesive "house style" as it were: things I should do/avoid, things that I may have overlooked, etc.

In general, I'm aiming for something that seems natural for the music —using thicker lines, older fonts (Nepomuk), original instrument names, etc.— but with the niceties of modern engraving.

- Matthew

[John Ruggero]

Congratulations! What software are you going to use? An example might be helpful to those making suggestions.

[mburns]

As usual, I'm using Lilypond. I think if this goes well I might look at getting Dorico, but at the moment it's not in my budget sadly.

Here's a couple of example pages, one from the full score, one from the parts. It's early days (I'm still doing note entry for one of the books) and the full score is the focus, so I haven't touched the parts in ways other than staff/font-sizing, so there's some obvious bad page-breaking there. I've got some general adjustments from other projects that I'm using, but I haven't really started the project-specific tweaks yet. There's some weirdness from the source that I've been asked to keep, such as keeping the 'cres' and 'rinf' markings as they are.

notatio-example.pdf

(63.09 KiB) Downloaded 185 times

notatio-example-part.pdf

(77.24 KiB) Downloaded 168 times

[John Ruggero]

I think that your work is outstanding, and it is clear why you were asked to do this project.

I noticed just a few things that you might consider.

1. Placing the measure numbers directly over the clefs would avoid any conflict with the music itself. And some might find them slightly too large. Italic finger numbers are also a possibility.

2. The slurs are beautifully done. However, the portato slurs seem too bowed to me. (Score ms. 85-88) One often sees portato slurs that are flatter than normal; you have the opposite.

3. The appoggiaturas are in some cases a little far from the main notes. (Part ms. 2-3 etc.)

4. A tr (m. 142) and a mordent in the Part (m. 3 in mov III) are too close to the noteheads.

5. Perhaps measures like 10 and 12 in mov II in the Part should be wider to give the hairpins more room or they begin resemble standard accent marks

6. The wedges are quite long (Score) and call attention to themselves. I noticed a few missing ones that you would catch in proofing.

[Harpsichordmaker]

Are the symbols of cresc/dim (<, >) present in the original print? If it’s 1730s I’d be surprised.
What music is that? Conposer and title?

[mburns]

Thank you very much for the lovely compliment John, it's much appreciated. I'll have a look at all of those items, they're really well observed. I didn't know about shaping portato slurs generally, so thanks for that. Distances between noteheads and articulations and other scripts is something Lilypond has an issue with generally, so it's about time I have a dive into those.

Is the size of the bar numbers an issue on the parts, full score, or both? I'm trying for a larger size as I'm fairly sure any printing will be done at a4, so I don't want them to be too small on the full score. Either way they do stick out, so I'll try some things.

The missing wedges are actually intentional, they're missing in the original too. Part of the general issues with consistency with these parts so they'll all be addressed at the editorial/proofing stage.

Sorry Harpsichordmaker, I got confused with another piece I was researching, I meant ~1760s, not 30s. The work isn't digitised or published at all yet, so I don't know if I should share the details.

[John Ruggero]

Is the size of the bar numbers an issue on the parts, full score, or both? I'm trying for a larger size as I'm fairly sure any printing will be done at a4, so I don't want them to be too small on the full score. Either way they do stick out, so I'll try some things.

The parts. The size looks fine to me in the score.

[Harpsichordmaker]

@mburns
Well the dynamics and other symbols seem very overabundant for the 1760s as well, hence I wonder if they are all to be found in the source(s). I am not asking what the sources are or the composer as I understand you may not be willing to share them.

[OCTO]

Think like this: nothing should pop up and nothing should disappear, everything should look VERY balanced in terms of "black-white power."
Lines should look similarly, text fonts adjusted to the lines, spacing adjusted to the staff size.

Take some scores that you admire a lot. Study spacing, line thickness, vertical spacing, position of objects...
(see benwiggy's verbatim copy of an old score in Dorico)

Usually a great looking "house style" is very simple.