Beauty in a digitalised world of music copying

[Schonbergian]

And Mozart is never uniformly coloured like a Dorico score.

Perhaps a better analogy would be an all-legato performance of Bach -- technically perfect, but lacking the subtle human variations in articulation and phrasing that make the piece truly sparkle.

[David Ward]

In the wider context of this thread, what do you all make of this?

About two years ago, a string quartet I'd written in the 1990s was to be performed. At the time of its composition, I'd very hurriedly hand copied the parts for the imminent public premiere, not in ink like a professional copyist, but in pencil. My original parts were really quite inefficient, some pages had almost nothing on them, there were several three page spreads &c. I offered the 2016 performers new computer typeset parts which were more efficiently laid out, more legible (I would have thought) and to my best Finale standard. They preferred to use the original parts, which they maintained gave a ‘better feel’ for the music, despite their all too visible flaws.

I doubt this would ever be the reaction of the members of a symphony orchestra, but it was interesting to me that the members of a very professional string quartet felt this way.

[OCTO]

David, I think that many musicians like to see composer's handwritten scores, it is just very nice to experience, I have always been asked for the same, but my scores are not so very well legible.
On the other hand, Finale can produce truly anemic scores, if everything is used by default.