5 ms·

Take from a musicologist and semi-professional performer: IMSLP is great for finding quick scores of random stuff, but the editions are often pretty shoddy, lik

Take from a musicologist and semi-professional performer: IMSLP is great for finding quick scores of random stuff, but the editions are often pretty shoddy, like either super outdated with weird editorial decisions that no one's agreed with for the last 50 years, or someone's totally amateur transcription full of errors and equally weird decisions. Treat it like you might treat Wikipedia as a research source (ok as an initial point of entry, but soon you want to dig into the real sources).

Eduard 3y ago
> IMSLP is great for finding quick scores of random stuff, but the editions are often pretty shoddy, like either super outdated with weird editorial decisions that no one's agreed with for the last 50 years, or someone's totally amateur transcription full of errors and equally weird decisions. You picked my interest. - what makes an "edition" ("score"?) outdated? - can you give examples for a weird editorial decision, maybe by additionally providing an alternative good editorial version? - what happened that something deemed correct (?) over 50 years ago is nowadays something no one agrees with?
- rdiddly 3y ago
  I don't presume to know what they meant, but as an example of something I think fits the bill, I downloaded "Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home" and the lyrics are full of a certain type of phonetic transliteration from vernacular Afro-American English (as if it's a foreign language or something) the likes of which you would probably never see today (e.g. lots of "dat" and "dey" and "throw'd" and "de whole day" and so on).
  - InCityDreams 3y ago
    I'd love to know if there was a whole class of people that actually did speak in "derogatory caricature".
- dmitrij 3y ago
  In the last decades philological standards for reproducing the original form of a musical work taking into account historical musical traditions, composing and performance practices have become much more thorough. Editions from the 19th and early 20th century which you can find on IMSLP because they are out of copyright restrictions often don't meet these scholarly standards. They very often reflect performance practises and the style of their time. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urtext_edition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urtext_edition.
  - wuiheerfoj 3y ago
    I’d add that some of the older texts are really badly laid out - often handwritten or in a strange typeface that makes them really hard to mentally parse when you‘re used to the uniformity of modern scores. That said imslp is still a life-saver and playing music would be a lot more painful (and expensive!) without it
  - perihelions 3y ago
    But – there are tons of prestigious, high-quality, Urtext editions on IMSLP, because https://imslp.org/wiki/IMSLP:Copyright_Made_Simple#Urtext_Editions https://imslp.org/wiki/IMSLP:Copyright_Made_Simple#Urtext_Ed... (copyright laws afford Urtext editions shorter terms of protection than original works)
  - mavhc 3y ago
    Is there a standard file format for scores? I see MusicXML and MEI.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- hackernewds 3y ago
  piqued not picked*
- Kaijo 3y ago
  To give an example to further illustrate answers you've received. In the 1800s it was common to produce heavily editorialized volumes of Bach, Scarlatti and other baroque keyboard works, with tempo and dynamic indications, written-out ornamentation, phrasing and articulation marks, pedalling, and other directions that would have been a relatively alien language in the actual autograph and early editions. These were much more reflective of (romantic) performance practices of the day than of the original period. While much of it could be taken as potentially interesting suggestion about interpretation on modern instruments, it gets hopelessly muddled when the score fails to distinguish between what content is the editors' vs. the composer's, as they so often do. Something like this of Bach's C major prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier, book 1, shows basically all the different kinds of unwanted editorializing I described: https://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP05948-WTC_Mugellini_No._1-12.pdf https://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP05948-WTC_Mugellini_No._1-12... Compare that with: https://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP05948-WTC_1_No_1-12.pdf https://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP05948-WTC_1_No_1-12.pdf A modern Urtext edition would also include detailed information about which manuscript and early edition sources it was prepared from, and any unresolved or variant readings between these sources, with performance suggestions (apart sometimes from fingerings) relegated to supplementary notes that are clearly written by the editors and not the composer.
mod50ack 3y ago
I work for IMSLP. I am working on adding new scores, but in many cases these old things are either the only editions published or the only editions we can take. IMSLP accepts urtext editions over 25 years old. We have a good amount of these from series for the most famous composers (e.g., Mozart, Bach...) but these are only a minority of the collection. We of course would like to add more. Otherwise, for "original" editorial editions, as well as arrangements, etc., we take them so long as the contributors of original creative contributors died in 1971 or earlier, or, as the case may be with amateur editions, with permission (note: we actually do have a significant number of quite good editions/arrangements contributed with permission, but we have a lot of files on the site overall). The other thing is, since we draw from many existing digitizations (such as national libraries), and most of their digitized documents are quite old. If you have any particular requests, please add them to the wishlist: https://imslp.org/wiki/Wishlist https://imslp.org/wiki/Wishlist Anyway, we are not really like Wikipedia, since we have a great deal of those primary sources on our site (incl. many autograph mss., as well as historical editions), and we're fundamentally more a collection of sources than a synthesis of them like WP. But we are certainly not a complete collection of sources, by any means (for both practical and legal reasons).
- enriquto 3y ago
  > IMSLP accepts urtext editions over 25 years old. Do you have a working definition of "urtext"? A lot of famous Bach and Mozart keyboard stuff was written on C clef for the right hand, but many so-called urtexts transcribe it to G. I don't understand how this can be seriously called urtext.
  - mod50ack 3y ago
    A mere clef change is a purely mechanical adjustment. The point of an urtext edition is to try to avoid new creative work being added.
    - enriquto 3y ago
      What counts as a purely mechanical adjustment? Can you apply any trivial and reversible operation to the notation? I guess changing the time signature to an equivalent one is acceptable. Changing all the notes to half their length? Replacing dotted notes by ligatures? Switching the key would be probably a "creative" change, but it's just as mechanical as the others. What if I move the key up a semitone but then I add a text that says to tune the instrument a semitone down? Does said text really matter, considering the historical tuning has changed by almost a whole semitone along the centuries? I feel very uneasy changing the notation of the original, even if the music sounds the same, and naming it "urtext". No big deal... after all, you can buy "urtext" with editor-provided fingerings from many publishers, so the word is almost meaningless at this point.

Eduard 3y ago

> IMSLP is great for finding quick scores of random stuff, but the editions are often pretty shoddy, like either super outdated with weird editorial decisions that no one's agreed with for the last 50 years, or someone's totally amateur transcription full of errors and equally weird decisions. You picked my interest. - what makes an "edition" ("score"?) outdated? - can you give examples for a weird editorial decision, maybe by additionally providing an alternative good editorial version? - what happened that something deemed correct (?) over 50 years ago is nowadays something no one agrees with?

rdiddly 3y ago
I don't presume to know what they meant, but as an example of something I think fits the bill, I downloaded "Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home" and the lyrics are full of a certain type of phonetic transliteration from vernacular Afro-American English (as if it's a foreign language or something) the likes of which you would probably never see today (e.g. lots of "dat" and "dey" and "throw'd" and "de whole day" and so on).
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  I'd love to know if there was a whole class of people that actually did speak in "derogatory caricature".
dmitrij 3y ago
In the last decades philological standards for reproducing the original form of a musical work taking into account historical musical traditions, composing and performance practices have become much more thorough. Editions from the 19th and early 20th century which you can find on IMSLP because they are out of copyright restrictions often don't meet these scholarly standards. They very often reflect performance practises and the style of their time. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urtext_edition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urtext_edition.
- wuiheerfoj 3y ago
  I’d add that some of the older texts are really badly laid out - often handwritten or in a strange typeface that makes them really hard to mentally parse when you‘re used to the uniformity of modern scores. That said imslp is still a life-saver and playing music would be a lot more painful (and expensive!) without it
- perihelions 3y ago
  But – there are tons of prestigious, high-quality, Urtext editions on IMSLP, because https://imslp.org/wiki/IMSLP:Copyright_Made_Simple#Urtext_Editions https://imslp.org/wiki/IMSLP:Copyright_Made_Simple#Urtext_Ed... (copyright laws afford Urtext editions shorter terms of protection than original works)
- mavhc 3y ago
  Is there a standard file format for scores? I see MusicXML and MEI.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
hackernewds 3y ago
piqued not picked*
Kaijo 3y ago
To give an example to further illustrate answers you've received. In the 1800s it was common to produce heavily editorialized volumes of Bach, Scarlatti and other baroque keyboard works, with tempo and dynamic indications, written-out ornamentation, phrasing and articulation marks, pedalling, and other directions that would have been a relatively alien language in the actual autograph and early editions. These were much more reflective of (romantic) performance practices of the day than of the original period. While much of it could be taken as potentially interesting suggestion about interpretation on modern instruments, it gets hopelessly muddled when the score fails to distinguish between what content is the editors' vs. the composer's, as they so often do. Something like this of Bach's C major prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier, book 1, shows basically all the different kinds of unwanted editorializing I described: https://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP05948-WTC_Mugellini_No._1-12.pdf https://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP05948-WTC_Mugellini_No._1-12... Compare that with: https://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP05948-WTC_1_No_1-12.pdf https://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP05948-WTC_1_No_1-12.pdf A modern Urtext edition would also include detailed information about which manuscript and early edition sources it was prepared from, and any unresolved or variant readings between these sources, with performance suggestions (apart sometimes from fingerings) relegated to supplementary notes that are clearly written by the editors and not the composer.

mod50ack 3y ago

I work for IMSLP. I am working on adding new scores, but in many cases these old things are either the only editions published or the only editions we can take. IMSLP accepts urtext editions over 25 years old. We have a good amount of these from series for the most famous composers (e.g., Mozart, Bach...) but these are only a minority of the collection. We of course would like to add more. Otherwise, for "original" editorial editions, as well as arrangements, etc., we take them so long as the contributors of original creative contributors died in 1971 or earlier, or, as the case may be with amateur editions, with permission (note: we actually do have a significant number of quite good editions/arrangements contributed with permission, but we have a lot of files on the site overall). The other thing is, since we draw from many existing digitizations (such as national libraries), and most of their digitized documents are quite old. If you have any particular requests, please add them to the wishlist: https://imslp.org/wiki/Wishlist https://imslp.org/wiki/Wishlist Anyway, we are not really like Wikipedia, since we have a great deal of those primary sources on our site (incl. many autograph mss., as well as historical editions), and we're fundamentally more a collection of sources than a synthesis of them like WP. But we are certainly not a complete collection of sources, by any means (for both practical and legal reasons).

enriquto 3y ago
> IMSLP accepts urtext editions over 25 years old. Do you have a working definition of "urtext"? A lot of famous Bach and Mozart keyboard stuff was written on C clef for the right hand, but many so-called urtexts transcribe it to G. I don't understand how this can be seriously called urtext.
- mod50ack 3y ago
  A mere clef change is a purely mechanical adjustment. The point of an urtext edition is to try to avoid new creative work being added.
  - enriquto 3y ago
    What counts as a purely mechanical adjustment? Can you apply any trivial and reversible operation to the notation? I guess changing the time signature to an equivalent one is acceptable. Changing all the notes to half their length? Replacing dotted notes by ligatures? Switching the key would be probably a "creative" change, but it's just as mechanical as the others. What if I move the key up a semitone but then I add a text that says to tune the instrument a semitone down? Does said text really matter, considering the historical tuning has changed by almost a whole semitone along the centuries? I feel very uneasy changing the notation of the original, even if the music sounds the same, and naming it "urtext". No big deal... after all, you can buy "urtext" with editor-provided fingerings from many publishers, so the word is almost meaningless at this point.