IMSLP Forums

When one enters an editor for a manuscript scan, our software assumes we mean copyist, and writes "Copyist:" rather than "Editor:" - reasonably enough, in most cases; I would have thought all. I would have been mistaken, of course. Borrowed a published manuscript copy of a recent work (recent/modern (Brian symphony 22); but this could as well be done for other music- don't know why, but...) - in which the preface noted that the manuscript was not a copy of the 2 existing manuscripts of the symphony, but used them, and the existing sketches, to create a (still handwritten) "final full score" with further all obvious errors corrected, etc.

(And unlike some scores I've seen described as publications of manuscript copies by Chester, Doblinger, etc. but which leave me wondering if they don't just use a handwriting-like typeface, since the result looks so regular- all the beams the same, none of the this-one-way this-that that even a copyist introduces in a work lasting more than 4 bars of music...- this was clearly a manuscript, for all the editing, just not a copy, in any strict sense; the word editor really did apply. I seem to recall this happening in some music created rather earlier and much more eligible for inclusion in our archives, too; we may even already have some examples; I wonder if we may need to include an optional | at the end of LinkEd, or a LinkEdM, for such cases...

There weren't really any handwriting style music-faces before the computer age (I think Finale offered one of the earlier ones). There were quite a few scores - especially expensive projects like full scores of operas - produced by professional copyists for reproduction by use of a printer's camera with plates generated instead of photographs starting in the mid-1800s. With the 18th century stuff it gets really difficult as sometimes the manuscripts made by Pisendel and his crew in Dresden were just copies, sometimes they were editions (added things like bowings, dynamics, etc.) and sometimes full-blown arrangements. They don't usually bother to tell you what was done up front, naturally, so you would actually have to do a careful comparison of a Vivaldi original (for example) with the Dresden copies to see what was done.

Just knowing that a printer's camera existed (I didn't!) clears a -lot- up for me. Some of the rest I can attribute probably to my assuming more irregularity would exist than actually would in stems (on the same page) of a hand-copied/written score- if the copier was being really careful I probably am not giving enough credit