Interesting video about notation handwritten by Hermann Zapf on Russian Publishing House’s website

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bophead
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Interesting video about notation handwritten by Hermann Zapf on Russian Publishing House’s website

Post by bophead »

Searching for information about the “Boosey & Hawkes Style Guide” I saw mentioned here several times I stumbled upon the site of a Russian publishing house. They have some interesting links there under the menu item “Type & Typography”.

https://www.terentyevpublishing.com/

I found especially one video interesting that I will link below.

I came across German typographer Hermann Zapf through my occupation with typography on general and Donald Knuth’s open source typographic markup language TeX of which the best known variant is LaTeX. (I am using ConTeXt which gives much easier control of layout than LaTeX.) Knuth and Zapf worked together on computer typography.

As someone who is also very much interested in German 20th century history, it shocked me that Zapf had involved his talent in such an evil piece of Nazi propaganda. Some of Hans Baumann’s songs are prohibited by law in Germany today – we have (luckily) strict laws that restrict free speech regarding Nazi propaganda as “use of symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations” which can be sued up to imprisonment.

Apart from that those books are yet faszinating pieces of calligraphy. What is not not mentioned in the video (unless I missed that): I guess that Zapf modeled his handwritten notation in these books after medieval examples.

https://youtu.be/watch?v=A_zPCbuy-ME

May peace be with all of us in these volatile times in which two sides shoot their one-sided propaganda at each other. Often these days I think of a song by Sting and I am shure that the Russians love their children, too …
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Fred G. Unn
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Re: Interesting video about notation handwritten by Hermann Zapf on Russian Publishing House’s website

Post by Fred G. Unn »

The list of literature link under Type & Typography definitely was interesting. I sorta collect notation guides so I have most of these he lists under "Books in English" anyway:
https://www.terentyevpublishing.com/type-and-typography/list-of-literature

I'm missing:
#5
#8 don't have this one but have another MPA publication called Standard Music Notation Practice
#17
#23
#24 (just ordered one off eBay)
#25

I'd say #1, #2, #3, and #14 are all pretty essential. For hand copying and jazz stuff #19 and "Music Copying: A Guide to Music Preparation" by Ken J. Williams are probably the best. The Ken Williams book is hard to find so if you find one, grab it! They used to sell it at Associated Music on 52nd St. in NYC.
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Fred G. Unn
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Re: Interesting video about notation handwritten by Hermann Zapf on Russian Publishing House’s website

Post by Fred G. Unn »

The Casus font that they use in their publications is pretty nice too. That one wasn't on my radar..
bophead
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Re: Interesting video about notation handwritten by Hermann Zapf on Russian Publishing House’s website

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Fred G. Unn wrote: 24 Feb 2022, 18:35 I sorta collect notation guides
There are more interesting links under https://www.terentyevpublishing.com/about. For the Russian websites you can use Google Translate (directly if on Chrome, through Google Translate extensions on Safari, Firefox, Chromium etc.) which works quite well for Russian → English (haven’t tested Russian → German).

Following a link on a linked page I found this book mentioned: http://archive.historischedrukkerij.be/items/show/7187 (latter link I found by google-ing). It seems to be an specialist book in German for printers about hand-engraving from the golden era of that craft.

I found out there is a copy in the library of Munich’s “Deutsches Museum” (technology museum) which I will scan there. I have yet to do some research on German copyright law (I think it ends 70 years after the author’s death) – in case it is possible I can upload it somewhere, maybe archive.org, as a PDF with included OCRed text so anyone can translate it into their mother tongue.
bophead
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Re: Interesting video about notation handwritten by Hermann Zapf on Russian Publishing House’s website

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Fred G. Unn wrote: 24 Feb 2022, 18:35 so I have most of these he lists under "Books in English" anyway:
In case you have some dough left ;) : there is a long literature list at the end of the “Essay on automates music engraving” on the Lilypond website.

http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.22/Documenta ... ature-list

Was that essay mentioned here already? And maybe we should start an extra literature list thread in this subforum. I found several while searching for the Boosey & Hawkes style manual.

Still my original question remains: Where can I get that style manual / Is it possible to get it if you are not working for Boosey & Hawkes?
bophead
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Re: Interesting video about notation handwritten by Hermann Zapf on Russian Publishing House’s website

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bophead wrote: 23 Feb 2022, 22:04 As someone who is also very much interested in German 20th century history, it shocked me that Zapf had involved his talent in such an evil piece of Nazi propaganda.


Back to the original topic:

Here is a video of Zapf doing a presentation of his career in San Francisco in 2001:

https://youtu.be/watch?v=4sVLM-nRoXI

Like many Germans of his generation Zapf better left out parts of his autobiography regarding the years 1933–1945 (Nazi regime). After 13:05 in this video he talks about not becoming an electrical engineer for political reasons because his father had been actively engaged in a trade union. At 16:30 he talks about moving from his birth place Nuremberg (the official “City of the Reich Party Congress”, huge propaganda events were held there on a huge compound ouside of the city) to the more liberal Frankfurt am Main and working under typographer Rudolph Koch’s son Paul. He mentions having done musical manuscripts of Brahms and Beethoven but of course leaves out the songs of Nazi poet Hans Baumann. English wiki also only mentions “song books”, German wiki not even mentions his musical calligraphy work.

Of course it is easy to condemn people of the past from a later point of view. Being a German with an ancestry ranging from being murdered in Theresienstadt concentration camp to death penalty after a Nuremberg war criminal trial and everything in between those two poles, I have thought about that a lot. I simply cannot tell what would have become of me in those years. Corruption and opportunism are part of human nature and sometimes it might have been a little twist of fate that would lead you in the direction of becoming a war criminal or into that of a hero of resistance.

On the other hand it is a shame that denazification post WW2 was so incomplete and it was so easy to leave out certain aspects of your autobiography. Of course there are examples that are much worse than Zapf – Kurt Waldheim comes to mind, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun who had used thousands of slave laborers for his V2 production and was one of the most important figures of NASA later (no rocket to the moon without him), or, less known: Hans Globke, Chief of Staff of the German Chancellery in West Germany under Germany’s first post war chancelor Adenauer had been superior to a certain Adolf Eichmann …
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Fred G. Unn
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Re: Interesting video about notation handwritten by Hermann Zapf on Russian Publishing House’s website

Post by Fred G. Unn »

bophead wrote: 24 Feb 2022, 21:18 In case you have some dough left ;) : there is a long literature list at the end of the “Essay on automates music engraving” on the Lilypond website.
Interesting! I have most of them listed in the bottom category, but am missing a few. A while back I used to do quite a bit of work for a woman who at the time was an editor at Boosey. She didn't use Finale at all (neither did B&H really), but occasionally she would have some Finale work come in, or she'd need me to clean up a score for export, etc., so she gave me a copy of the B&H Style Guide to adhere to their standards. The version I have is by David Bray and has a 2010 copyright date, second edition 2012.
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Fred G. Unn
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Re: Interesting video about notation handwritten by Hermann Zapf on Russian Publishing House’s website

Post by Fred G. Unn »

BTW, the Schirmer "Manual of Style and Usage" is very good, details their house style, and is publicly available for purchase. Here's a link:
https://classicalondemand.com/manual-of-style.html
bophead
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Re: Interesting video about notation handwritten by Hermann Zapf on Russian Publishing House’s website

Post by bophead »

bophead wrote: 24 Feb 2022, 21:00 It seems to be an specialist book in German for printers about hand-engraving from the golden era of that craft.
Found another mention of Rudolf Witten’s instruction manual for printers with examples. Seems the book is not about plate engraving but movable type.

Interesting example with Hebrew lyrics and the music written right to left!

Witten seems to be popular in Russia ;)

https://ptrue.livejournal.com/tag/witte ... ess_scroll

Edit: The Hebrew example makes of course sense. If you have a right-to-left script like the Hebrew or the Arabic alphabet lyrics and music must of course have the same direction. But I had never seen that before.
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