IMSLP Forums

The set of parts for Danse Macabre currently does not include the solo violin part. Can this be included?

It's there, under Arrangements and Transcriptions (here).

That is to play with piano. I was looking for the orchestral solo part which is different in some parts.

That's incredible if you're right - I've never heard of the player's copy differing from the orchestral score before. I would also be interested to see it uploaded here.

It's because the piece is more of "orchestra with violin solo", that is, the orchestra is more than accompaniment, so in the reduction, Saint-Saens changed things around a bit and added more violin.

In that case, maybe we should look for someone else's reduction...

A quick typesetting wouldn't be too difficult. That is without cues or thought out page turns, but even these wouldn't be too difficult with some good feedback. One question: when the soloist is resting do they usually go back to playing with the first violins? or do they actually rest?

The soloist is a separate part in the full score, so assumedly they would rest.

When I was at high school, our orchestra played it (admittedly it was an arranged version but from what I can work out it only deleted one section) and the solo violin was played by the leader of the orchestra and they joined in with the first violins when they could.

http://sites.google.com/site/horndude77/drop

Here's a potential part. I tried to add cues from the first violins when available. It may be getting a bit cluttered. Anyway let me know if it looks somewhat acceptable and I'll add it to the page.

Hi Jay,

this is very good.

Page 1

Bar 25: dynamic missing, f
Bars 41–44: no A flats, all A naturals in Vln I cue
Bars 42, 44, 46: on first beat, rather than omit "ten.", use a tenuto mark? _
Bar 62: flip stem on 3rd beat (purely cosmetic; ditto bars 70 and 78, 1st beat)

Apart from the first cue from bar 33 to 40, the others on the first page are very close to the bottom of the stave; these would probably be better flipped with a full-sized (not cue-sized) bar rest appearing one line higher (rather than with the cue stem up and the bar rest below the stave).

Page 2

Bar 189: indication of pizz. missing (this would require a cautionary marking of (arco) immediately after figure E)
Bar 194: indication of poco a poco cresc. missing
Bar 225: G sharp, not G natural here (unlike bar 209)
Bars 209, 225, collision between the slur and the accent; the accent needs to be moved down slightly to avoid this.
Bars 257, 261, 263, collision between the triplet bracket and the accent; the accent needs to be moved slightly higher
Bar 262, 302: indication of cresc. missing
Bar 273, 281–288: bars rest should be in normal position, not centered on bottom stave line
Bar 297, 305: indication of legg. missing
Bar 332: flip stem on 1st beat (cosmetic, but this will also help the slur)

The notes on B from figure E through to figure F would make many of the slurs neater by being uniformly stem up rather than down.

As for the Vln I cues, some of these should be stem down to avoid collision with the bar rest (extended passages of cues are problematic in this respect); I'd alter bars 158/159; 170–173; 289–292; 300–302; and 308. The triplet passage from figure G to figure H is missing numerous slurs – there should be one across every bar line apart from the first and last.

The slur from bar 325 to 326 looks odd owing to the system break; I would either tweak the slur in bar 326 or alter the spacing to have 325 and 326 adjacent on either the penultimate system or the last.

Page 3

Bars 341, 342: cresc. & dim. hairpins missing
Bar 348: indication of cresc. missing
Bar 351: > accent missing on 1st beat
Bar 348: indication of non legato missing
Bar 366–369: 4 bars rest should be in normal position, not centered on bottom stave line
Bar 391: courtesy natural on 1st beat
Bar 394: up-bow, not down-bow on 2nd beat
Bar 396, 404: acciaccatura on 1st beat is A flat, not A natural
Bar 416: indication of animato as an expression mark is redundant; it's already a tempo mark
Bar 434: is not a identical copy of bar 433 as the first quaver should be A flat, not G; however, bars 435–437 are identical to bar 434.
Bar 445–450: dim. hairpin missing
Bar 451: indication of dim. missing
Bar 467, collision between the slur and the accent; the accent needs to be moved down slightly to avoid this.

Again the extended violin cues cause problems, here the sequence of acciaccaturas around bar 400 are very awkward to read. Moreover, on this page there are actual collisions between the cues and the bar rests, unlike the "near misses" on pages 1 and 2. I'd alter the following bars along the lines of previous suggestions: bars 361–363; 378; 386/387; 391; 426–430; 433/434; and 445–453.

I'm not an expert on how cues should be notated, but the combination of the repeat bar symbol with the bar rest looks odd to me – I would probably be tempted to omit the bar rest. Also, once you have three or more of these in a row it's usually customary to begin adding a numeric superscript over each to indicate the total number of repetitions.

The alternative to having the violin 1 part notated as lengthy cues and the various resulting problems of somewhat unsightly typesetting would be to have it as a second or ossia stave to the solo part throughout, and to avoid wastage of space and pages, hide one or other of the staves if either the solo violin or the 1st violins are silent for the length of a system. (I also note there are cue marks in the actual violin 1 part to cover the absence of a harp, at bars 33–40, 65–68, and 73–76, for example.) This would also make the part easily playable by the first desk, assuming the concertmaster sits in first chair rather than taking a separate position from the section.

The other curiosity about Saint-Saëns’ writing for the solo violin is that he occasionally writes above the stave specifying the use of the second string, when it would be possible to write the part there in scordatura (though an assumed key signature of G sharp minor with 5 sharps would be a little nasty, though not as bad as the alternative with seven flats). Such tricks are left for people like Heinrich Biber! ;-)

Regards, Philip

That was a very thorough review! Thanks.

I've fixed most of the simple errors. Accent/slur collisions, cue note/whole rest collisions and lower multi-measure rests during cue sections haven't been corrected yet. I also added a solo violin / violin I part as suggested (though I haven't add any harp or other cues yet). It's longer so page turns are probably an issue, but it is easier to read. It does also introduce some cross-staff bar/text marking collisions. I'll take a look at some of this later.

Well, if it's worth doing, then it's worth doing right! ;-)

The Violin I part would benefit from the first page turn being directly after figure C or the thirteen bar multi-rest immediately following. If bars 364 and 365 could be squeezed back onto page 3, then the four bar multirest from 366–369 is the best place for the second page turn, and thus the whole part is confined to four pages (which would be printed as the usual folded bifolio).

As for the combined Violin I / Violin solo part, obviously it would only be used on the front desk of the section, and the general rule tends to be that the associate concertmaster turns the pages, especially if the concertmaster has a solo to play. So these page turns don't look quite so crucial, though it would be nice to get some feedback from a front chair musician. ;-)

On the other hand if the concertmaster is standing by himself separate from the section, then the page turns would be far from ideal...

Once again: very good work, Jay, both of these will make excellent additions to the set of parts on the existing page.

Regards, PML

pml wrote:Well, if it's worth doing, then it's worth doing right!

Agreed.

pml wrote:The Violin I part would benefit from the first page turn being directly after figure C or the thirteen bar multi-rest immediately following. If bars 364 and 365 could be squeezed back onto page 3, then the four bar multirest from 366–369 is the best place for the second page turn, and thus the whole part is confined to four pages (which would be printed as the usual folded bifolio).

Done. I turned on lilypond automatic page turning and it did as you suggested above.

pml wrote:As for the combined Violin I / Violin solo part, obviously it would only be used on the front desk of the section, and the general rule tends to be that the associate concertmaster turns the pages, especially if the concertmaster has a solo to play. So these page turns don't look quite so crucial, though it would be nice to get some feedback from a front chair musician.

Yeah, some feedback here from the end-user would be best.

I ended up just taking out the rests under the cues in violin_solo.pdf. I'm not sure if that's preferable to moving each rest that collides with the cue notes. Ideally lilypond would deal with moving the rest automatically (which it may do at some point in the future).