Re: Style for Editorial Rests

Kieren, as usual, you are asking a good question!

On Mon, 22 Jun 2026, Kieren MacMillan wrote:

> > My concern with this approach is that busy professional singers might
> see the square brackets whilst sight-reading and think, “What does that
> mean? Am I actually supposed to observe that quarter rest or not? Do the
> beats in this measure add up to a whole note or not?” The distraction could
> cause reading errors and lost rehearsal time.
>
> We may be using the word “editorial” to mean different things…? I mean “We
> feel quite sure the composer meant this, but it’s not *actually* in the
> manuscript, so we want to indicate that it’s our editorial choice.” What do
> you mean by “editorial”?
>

What I mean by “editorial” is “a decision by my choirmaster that the
singers in our choir should shave off exactly an eighth (or quarter or
half) rest from the original note value written by the composer, in order
to allow a specific, metrical amount of time for breathing.” That amount of
time is unified across the section (e.g., altos).

I will illustrate what I mean with the real-life example that inspired this
thread. This is one system of music from Lassus, Genuit puerpera Regem
(1594 / 1604):

[image: image.png]


The only quarter rest here that is original to the 1604 source is the one
at the beginning of measure 11 (third measure of this system) in the Tenor
(T1) part.


All other quarter rests that you see here are “editorial.” The composer,
Lassus, definitely did not write them or conceive of them, which means that
my definition of “editorial” is very different from “We feel quite sure the
composer meant this, but it’s not *actually* in the manuscript.” Rather,
what I mean is “the editor [Gabriel] has engraved what our choirmaster
wants you as the singer in 2026 to sing, although it’s not in the original
source.”


On Mon, 22 Jun 2026, William Rehwinkel wrote:

> If you're more concerned about readability of the score for performance, I
> would recommend going the route of leaving the score completely plain with
> editorial changes and writing the list of original readings at the end
> (the "critical notes" section).
>

Thank you, William! In fact, in this Lassus example, that is precisely what
I did. Here’s a screenshot from my Editorial Notes on the last page of my
edition:

[image: image.png]

The reason that I started this email thread is that next time, I’d love to
be able to write something like “Brackets around rests [or XYZ symbol over
a rest] indicate that those rests are editorial additions to indicate early
releases.”

On Mon, 22 Jun 2026, Knute Snortum wrote:

> [image: image.png]
>>
> I would vote yes for this approach.  If I saw that in a choir piece, I
> would assume the rest was not in the original source and was added by an
> editor.  You might want to increase the bracket font size, though.
>

Thanks, Knute! Indeed, I might continue to refine this approach by playing
with the formatting.