Treatment of cautionary accidentals in modern critical edition

[NeeraWM]

I'm working on a critical performance edition of a Romantic piece (ca. 1855).
The source uses certain conventions that could be defined outdated:

• most times, though not always, if two consecutive notes are equal in pitch and under a slur, a tie is not added. For string instruments this is easy: in lack of other articulations, a tie must be added. For the piano, though, this is more delicate. If I decide to add a tie in the piano, should I use dashed typeface and add a mention in the Critical Notes?

• cautionary accidentals are very often omitted. Dorico, the program I'm using to prepare this edition, adds them all as requested, of course, and I am wondering if I should add square brackets around each cautionary accidental that I add and that was not present in the source. At start I thought yes, but then they would not be easy to distinguish from accidentals that were actually missing from the score and that had to be supplemented (e.g., a wrong note).

What do you think of these two issues?
Thank you!

[Harpsichordmaker]

As for the first issue, a dashed tie is enough, no need to a dedicated note in the critical commentary.

Usual convention for cautionary accidentals is round brackets, in order to distinguish them by the square brackets used for accidentals actually missing in the source(s).

In practice, I don’t feel the necessity for any sign telling it’s an editorial addition, so I’d go without any bracket at all. A cautionary accidental is not something “added” to the text, it’s only a sign saying “be careful and not be fooled by the harmonic/melodic context: this note is intended to be exactly what it’s written”. There is a lot of other things editors add or modify without telling: beaming; ties over a barline (very often the composers only put an augmentation dot just after the barline); clefs; etc.


Most of the issues for the modern editor come from the different conventions for repeated altered notes in the same bar, as until first decade of XIX-century (however I am only - a bit - knowledgeable for XVIII century) any alteration was only valid for the specific note it was put on, safe than for repeated notes (in which case the alteration is only to be found near the first one), etc. etc.

[NeeraWM]

It sounds good, I will revise the material and remove brackets where not needed.
Thanks!

[John Ruggero]

There is a lot of other things editors add or modify without telling: beaming; ties over a barline (very often the composers only put an augmentation dot just after the barline); clefs; etc.

Unfortunately, too true.

[Harpsichordmaker]

Well, John, of course you are right, but probably not all things are equal: beaming(1) can definitely convey musical meaning and should be preserved, while clefs can maybe modernized with little harm…

_______
(1) beaming in XVII-XIX-centuries Opera and in general singing parts only follow a convention devoid of musical meaning, though. So probably it’s on a case-by-case basis.

[benwiggy]

Unfortunately, too true.

I don't think that's a cause for regret at all. I'd argue that an augmentation dot after the bar line versus a tied note over the barline is just two different methods of communicating the same thing. It's not a change to the meaning. It's not an editor's opinion on what was intended. And I certainly wouldn't put dots after barlines in a modern score. (If you want that, you can play from a scan of the original.) And there's certainly no need to list every such instance in critical commentary.

If the original was in different clefs, then that's often conveyed in an incipit, or in editorial notes. But again, I wouldn't say that that changing a Soprano line from a C1 clef to a G2 clef represents a change in meaning of the notation. (Granted, chiave alte are a different matter.)

As such, these are no different to using modern (or even just consistent) spellings in an edition of Shakespeare.

You can argue that changes to beaming could convey a different meaning, I'll grant you.

To the OP:

I'd agree that you should use dashed ties and accidentals in parentheses for cautionaries (which Dorico will add automatically, if you want).

[John Ruggero]

I agree that everything is relative and everything should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. But I do think that an editor should be transparent about changes, particularly in critical editions. I've seen a lot of what I consider to be very bad editorial decisions of this type in otherwise praiseworthy editions.

[NeeraWM]

I agree with benwiggy that modernising notation wherever it does not alter the musical meaning is the way to go as it makes the edition more accessible. I would still add interesting occurrences either in the Preface or just once in the ensuing Critical Commentary.

Concerning clefs, I have now copied the cello line and seen how the copyist more likely than the composer altered clefs to optimise vertical spacing which is very cramped throughout (some notes in the piano simply have an 8 written below, and one notices the was no room for the ottava below).
A future work I will take care of is a collection of cello duos where the composer writes “for the study of clefs”. In that case, I’ve resolved to use original clefs in the score and modern clefs in parts.

For my ignorance, please, what are “chiave alte”? I possibly know them under a different name, but since it doesn’t sound correct in Italian —should be “chiavi alte” but also then I don’t know what they refer to—could you elaborate or point to a resource?

Finally, for accidentals: I do not like round parentheses as they take so much horizontal space—personal allergy, yes.
For automatic cautionaries such as same octave different bar, I put them without parentheses. If they are forced cautionary, which the editor added as a plus, I put them in square brackets

[benwiggy]

For my ignorance, please, what are “chiave alte”? I possibly know them under a different name, but since it doesn’t sound correct in Italian —should be “chiavi alte” but also then I don’t know what they refer to—could you elaborate or point to a resource?

Yes, you're absolutely right - a spelling mistake on my part. They are also know as chiavette. It's a 16th/17th-century notation, in which clefs are used to display the notes at a higher pitch than usual. Counter-intuitively, this usually indicates downward transposition.

For automatic cautionaries such as same octave different bar, I put them without parentheses.

It's usual practice that any accidentals added should be marked as editorial. That's perhaps less important for a 19th-century work, however.

In editions of earlier works, you might need four different type of accidental -- to distinguish between:

• Accidentals present in the source material
• Courtesy accidentals added by the editor.
• Accidentals implicit in the source but necessary in modern notation, due to barlines.
• Accidentals missing in the source and added by the editor, e.g. ficta.

[John Ruggero]

To clarify, Harpsichordmaker said: "There is a lot of other things editors add or modify without telling..." It was the "without telling" part that I was commenting on.