Re: Style for Editorial Rests

Hi Gabriel,

> 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.png
>
To be honest, this whole approach gives me a slight niggle. (I'm hoping 
this expression, which I had to look up, is not offensive; in German I 
would write "der Ansatz verursacht mir leichte Bauchschmerzen" which is 
a polite way of expressing discomfort at other people's decisions 
without insulting them.)

I understand the need for practical editions as opposed to scholarly 
ones. But in your example, there are two things happening that would 
cause me, if I were to sing or direct this piece, try and look for a 
different edition, no matter how beautiful and thorough it is:

  * The transposition: Maybe it's a bit of voodoo, but I'm convinced
    that the way music looks in print influences how we "feel" it /
    think about it / perform it. The lack of key signatures (except for
    one ♭ in the 'transposed system') is essential for the way pitches
    and their relations are construed up to the 16th century and beyond.
    Especially for a very small shift like a semitone, I feel that you
    get a considerable loss in authenticity of look-and-feel for a
    comparatively small gain. When performing music of that time, I
    think one has to get used to the fact that the correspondence
    between written pitch and the pitch a present-day singer with
    perfect pitch (or experienced vocal chords) might expect is
    modified. To me, seeing Lasso with ♭♭♭♭♭ key signature looks as
    'wrong' as it would look in halved or quartered note values.
  * The editorial rests: The main problem I see with the [bracketed
    rest] is that the brackets are an established means of indicating
    that the editor added something here that should probably or
    certainly be there, but was missing from the original source. I
    could understand your slightly modified meaning of 'the editor
    suggests that you should read a rest here', but what the brackets
    fail to indicate is that you've also changed the duration of the
    preceding note.

Here's an idea for indicating the shortened note without sacrificing the 
accuracy of the edition: What about something like the following?

It would be a bit of work to set this up robustly and conveniently in 
LilyPond, so I'd like to ask first ...

Lukas