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I'm displaying my ignorance here - clearly a part of my training that was inadequate. I do think of cautionary and courtesy as the same thing, and don't understand why some use parenthesis and some don't. Could you explain?

This is simply not true, for the most part, unless you are talking about hack editions by companies and editors who have no busy touching famous music in the first place.

I am looking right now at Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, version for solo piano and published in 1927. Measure three has a Db, and measure four restores the D, back to the key of Bb on the second 8th note. I could refer to example after example, in this one famous piece, and it conforms to the exact rule-of-thumb I already mentioned.

As for Chopin, just look at the Waltzes. Examine the famous Schirmer editions, Josefy and Mikuli, then compare with Paderewski, then check a few more modern editions, then check the famous ones that appear in some of the more popular method books that are carefully edited. The cautionary accidentals, sharps and flats are so standard that you will be hard pressed to find any differences.

Fine, but I also want my students to know that there *is* a rather strongly established standard going back almost two centuries and still being followed by most publishers right now. You and others are making it sound as if using these cautionary accidentals is pretty much a hit and miss thing, with very little agreement, and that simply is not so.

I have to ask you what music you are sightreading, or what music you review quickly in order to perform that you do not practice on a regular basis. If you are looking through method book materials, who knows what you will find, since almost anything is done in many of them. But if you are reading through Beethoven or Mozart Sonatas, any of the major works of Bach, any of the great 19th century Romantics, any of the great 20th century composers (think only of Hindemith, Prokoview, Bartok and so on), or any of the more difficult arrangements of current music, if you are annoyed by too MANY unnecessary extra accidentals, you are a better sight-reader and general reader than I am, and I should be taking lessons from you to find out why you read so much better than I do.

I think of them as being the same also - with or without the parenthesis, it is telling you to move a half step in a direction.

I hate sightreading music with these "helpers" as I already have read the music and the courtesy/cautionary (unnecessary) symbol makes my fast thinking mind adjust (again!) for the symbol. I just will not accept them since I was trained with the idea of the barline means business in cancelling an accidental that was temporarily placed in a measure. Barline means "Gone. Gone and forgotten."

It's also advocating a "green", clean environment. Let's keep the music page uncluttered without unessential stuff to remind students who didn't "get it". They will begin to learn the rule if a red pen has to keep entering "reminders" on the page. So, if we teach well, why do we need a "remedial" reminder?

I just feel strongly about this topic.

They are not the same at all, because the purpose of these two classifications of "extra" symbols are very different.

Sharps, flats and naturals in parentheses are far less common and not standard. They are attempts by composers and editors to prevent reading mistakes that are very common in passages that are complex, but I really see very few of them in advanced music.

What I have been talking about, from the start, is an unwritten convention that has been followed for about 150 years and is fully standard right now. I have given specific examples of when these cautionary or courtesy accidentals are fully standard, and I just gave one today from Gershwin. I can do the same with Debussy's preludes.

A further example would be Rachmaninov's C# Prelude, Op. 3, No. 2. I'm using famous pieces because it should be easy for anyone in this forum to check my facts.

In measure 5 there is an A# in both hands, quite obviously not in the key signature, but in the following measure, the A is naturaled in every edition, and I have just looked at five. Now, someone may say, "Well, this is more complicated music. It has lots of sharps and hard chords." OK. But the fact is that even in method books, this convention of putting in cautionary accidents is standard and is followed. The reason it is not in the piece I mentioned is that it is in an earlier grade or level, and this method, like some others, does not fully support this convention until later books.

The thinking, apparently, is that this convention would be confusing to beginners and therefore can be introduced later, and I have no problem with that. I prefer to introduce it from the start, since it gets questions out of the way.

Then you were simply trained incompletely. Again, if you would only examine countless editions, many famous, written for the last 150 years, you would find yourself objecting not only to editors but some of our most famous composers. I have stated before that much of the money I have made in music has been accompanying, and just two weeks ago I had to step in and learn an accompanyment in less than 30 minutes then play it with a young, shaky player. I am a lightning fast reader. I spent the rest of our time together coaching him in *his* part. In all the years I have played, I have never once whited or wited out an accidental added by any editor or composer of famous music. Instead, in long, complicated measures of complex music, I have frequently added accidentals over mistakes I've made in complicated measures by composers such as Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Bartok, Hindemith, and so on.

This is *NOT* about students, Betty. I don't understand why you and everyone else is not getting my point. This is about a convention that has been around a hundred and fifty yearsand is followed by all famous editors and composers, right to this very day.

I have a dreadful idea in my head of teachers gleefully destroying scores, assuming that any mark by any composer or editor, for any reason, was not meant and should be "wited out".

I teach my students to write reminders above sharps, flats and naturals they miss. I never have to worry about them using this as a permanent crutch, since the never do it (or almost never do) unless I make them, in lessons. In other words, they are quite content with missing the same notes a hundred times, when I tell them again and again: if you make the same mistake three times, write in something that will STOP this.

Human nature is not to write in what is not necessary. Even now, I have to remind myself to pick up a pencil and mark something before a mistake becomes a habit.


And sometimes we see even more put in by the composers themselves, who for one reason or another realize that they themselves, upon reviewing music they wrote in the past but have partially forgotten, are misreading their own music.

It is true that very simple music needs very little reminding of accidentals, but how many students do not have the goal of reaching a reading level at which they can play very difficult music?

I generally mention Rachmaninov as a tonal composer whose measures are so long and so complicated that it is SO easy to lose track of what is flat or sharped, and what is not. For instance, in his music it is common to find something naturaled in the beginning of a measure, sharped or flatted in the middle, then naturaled again before the measure is ended, and most of the time you are not actually playing in the key the piece is written in, since frequent modulations are often very, very far from the key signature.

But similar things happen in Bach too, as you well know based on your specialization in teaching this composers music. I don't see students missing extra accidentals. I see them missing those that are repeated but not marked in long measures, or not realizing that sharps and flats in the key signature have been restored in the following measures. Some of this has to do with lack of understanding of chord structure, harmony, and so on, but sometimes it's just because Bach is HARD!!!

Gary D., there are countless 'editions' of famous pieces which are not urtext. So I do refute your claim that I am 'just wrong' in my claim that the edition makes a difference.

Many publishers put compilations of repertoire together along with considerable editorial input and I know through my own work as an editor, when comparing various versions of the same famous work, there there are amazing differences from one edition to the next. Debussy's Le Petit Negre, for instance, comes with different pedalling, different articulation, different dynamic markings and, to me astonishingly, different structure!!!! (some versions have a repeat where others do not).

In my experience as a composer I have seen my own works published in a variety of ways (when the same work has appeared in different compilations).

And finally, many composers in the twentieth century decided that for their own works the rule regarding accidentals lasting until the barline was not the most practical way to present their music. And so they included an accidental whenever it applied to that one note. This is a big shift in common practice, but it is easy to see why a composer chooses to work this way: usually this method is used in works without metre, or works where long passages fit inside the physical constraints of the barline.

There are different approaches that need to be taken for different types of repertoire, and as students develop they will become proficient in moving between stylistic idiosyncracies.

But in the meantime, I was not intending to criticise the way you teach in the slightest - it sounds like it works beautifully! My comments were of a general nature reflecting my experiences as a performer/publisher.

My personal preference is that a courtesy accidental should be shown if the previously altered note is within the 'field of vision'. Once a line break is reached, I don't consider it necessary, in fact I find it serves more to confuse.

This caused me quite a few headaches when I was proof-reading my books - I did the original scores in Cubase, which totally overdoes the courtesy accidentals once you enable them (next instance of that line/space gets one no matter how far away it is) and the publisher used Sibelius, which had it's own rules as well (or maybe it was house rules), so I had to go through the whole process again.

Now I'm trying to score up some new ones, and this time I'm trying to use Logic so I don't have to work in Bootcamp on the Mac. Of course, this brings a whole new level of pain to pretty much every aspect of scoring with its own peculiar brand of stupid. I don't know why I'm doing it to myself really, but I've got to that point where I'm damned if I'm going to let it beat me!

I overstated my case.

I was merely trying to point out that there is a sort of "rule-of-thumb" regarding when and why these accidentals are included. In the end, there are times when following any rule blindly means including accidentals that are not truly needed, while other times there might be a practical rule for more than usual. It would depend completely on the music.

In fact, inclusion or not inclusion of courtesy/cautionary accidentals is a minor problem compared to other much more important things that are changed. A good example of this is the way that Chopin's "ped"/"*" marks have been changed in some modern editions to an intepretation of what this or that editor thinks they should have been, or how they might be better written. This can help a student, but it also can be highly misleading.

The whole concept of "Urtext" is a muddy one, since there are often multiple sources, serious disagreements about how a composer's handwriting was originally put into print, and so on. In the case of someone like Debussy, we at least have one set of editions that were more or less standard for many years (the costly Durand ones), and even so, Debussy clearly took at least two sections of his own "Sunken Cathedral" double time, suggesting that there were and are important thoughts of his that are totally missing from the score we generally see.

I am not arguing for the mindless, sheep-like obedience to any set of rules, merely pointing out that there are some basic concepts here that are *usually* followed. I had a discusion about this point with an advanced student today.

Also true of Chopin's large collection of works. A comparison of editing by Mikuli and Josefy shows incredibly important differences, seldom in notes (though sometimes), but often in dynmaic markings, accents, and even phrasing. For instance, the 2nd Ballade by Chopin has the long phrases, which I believe are correct, chopped up into shorter ones by Josefy. It goes on and on.

I have no doubt whatsoever that this is so.

I was referring to editions of tonal music, for the most part up to but not going too far past the time of Rachmaninov/Bartok (about WWII). If we open the door to anyone publishing in the 20th and early 21st century, all bets are off.

I have done this myself. I am in NO way opposed to alternate ways of notating and in fact often do very non-standard things myself. Playing Devil's Advocate here, I would argue that by the time of Rachmaninov the standard way of marking accidentals was already very difficult. In long measures I frequently have many repeating sharps, flats and naturals within a single measure marked, in pencil, above the notes. The reason is that there can so many slithering, modulating changes within one bar that it becomes almost hopeless depending on pure reading to nail things the first or second time.

I was trying to make general comments, reflecting my own experiences, same thing. I would wager that if we were talking about a specific piece of music, not generalizing, we might agree as much as 90% of the time, and when we did not, would probably see each other's points.

Thank you very much for clarifying!

Gary

This is a very interesting view, and it may be the best logic I've seen in explaining why putting in courtesy accidentals is most often standard directly after a measure that has something altered and placed near the beginning of the new measure. It's not that simple, but it does give a bit of a principle to something that is extremely complicated.

However, my mind connects the end of a line to the next line just as it connects the end of each printed line to the next, in language.

Good grief, does this include non-consecutive measures? Since I don't publish, I do my proofing as I teach, so my inclusion of courtesy accidentals is entirely according to my own feel. I do have to admit that when I omit even the most common ones, my students never seem to notice it, but I have always attributed this to their lack of experience with a great deal of printed music combined with a weaker knowledge of theory.

I use Finale. It may have the option of turning on accidentals, as Sibelius does, but I'm afraid having to remove things that Finale adds, against my will, would annoy me far more than adding them.

The "elephant in the room" may be the increasing reliance on programs to write music. There are still superb editions, but they seem to be more and more are. Perhaps the most glaring problems I notice in recent editions is spacing problems that jam accidentals against bar lines and that cram notes together horizontally in a way that really distorts the rhythm visually.

Now I'm trying to score up some new ones, and this time I'm trying to use Logic so I don't have to work in Bootcamp on the Mac. Of course, this brings a whole new level of pain to pretty much every aspect of scoring with its own peculiar brand of stupid. I don't know why I'm doing it to myself really, but I've got to that point where I'm damned if I'm going to let it beat me! [/quote]