Music Preparation Guidelines (from MOLA)

[jrethorst]

The Major Orchestra Librarians' Association's booklet on the basics:

http://mola-inc.org/article/Music-Prepa ... -Music.pdf

[David Ward]

The Major Orchestra Librarians' Association is a US-based organization, and so I presume these guidelines are current for the US.

I believe the Scottish Chamber Orchestra has recently actively asked for parts of new music to be plastic coil bound (contrary to the MOLA guidelines). Gould's stave-size recommendations are, I would hope, currently appropriate for the UK, and perhaps also for elsewhere.

EDIT: I stand corrected: MOLA seems to be more international in its membership than I had originally thought …

[OCTO]

Attached for the future reference.

[Snorlax]

The last revision is 2006.
Would the forum say much has changed since then?
If so, what?
Jim

[John Ruggero]

Most of it is unobjectionable but on page 4 it says "Each bar should be numbered…" then on page 6 its says "Numbering each measure should be avoided…" What?

Arnstein would have disagreed with:

1. "In hand copied parts …all stems, beams and bar lines should be ruled with a straight edge…"

We only ruled the beams in all music, and bar lines, in double-staved music. It is easy to draw an short adequately-straight vertical line by hand, and it saves a lot of time.

2. "Percussion parts may be in score form or individual instrumental parts."

Percussion parts were always done in score, never in individual parts, because percussion sections need the freedom to work this out themselves. When composers made this mistake in their scores, we had to convert the percussion parts back into a percussion score. Of course, this was for music aimed at multiple performances and orchestras.

3. "Plastic comb or coil binding may be used for scores but not for parts."

Any part that could not be stapled into a single signature, like an opera string part, was spiral-bound with cardboard covers. Never a problem.

[RMK]

Most of it is unobjectionable but on page 4 it says "Each bar should be numbered…" then on page 6 its says "Numbering each measure should be avoided…" What?

Page 4 refers to full score.

Page 6 refers to extracted parts

Makes sense to me.

[John Ruggero]

Thanks, RMK. I completely missed that.

So add one more to the Arnstein list:

A. sometimes numbered all measures in a score, but mostly used boxed measure numbers at 10 measure intervals for both the score and parts. Of course, this was before computerized measure numbers. However, I was surprised to find how well this system still works in the midst of a MM forum thread a couple of years ago.

[Christof Schardt]

3. "Plastic comb or coil binding may be used for scores but not for parts."

When Schott-Verlag started to use spiral bound parts, the orchestras complained, that they got problems fitting the documents into the shelf compartments.

[John Ruggero]

3. "Plastic comb or coil binding may be used for scores but not for parts."

When Schott-Verlag started to use spiral bound parts, the orchestras complained, that they got problems fitting the documents into the shelf compartments.

That's such a shame. The spiral adds so little to the width that one would think that something could have been done. The pages of comb and spiral bound music turn so nicely, lie flat, and stay turned. All my chamber music scores and parts for performance and many piano scores are comb-bound.

[RMK]

Spiral bound parts are a nightmare for orchestra librarians. They take up a lot of storage space and the spirals are always getting tangled up with each other. Spiral binding may be OK for solo or chamber music, but when you are dealing with 60 or 70 separate parts they are a major nuisance.