Re: a tale of two scores

Poldie wrote:
Simon Smith wrote:
David Horne, _the_ chancellor (*) wrote:
This morning, my copies of Stockhausen "Gruppen" and Boulez "Notations
I-IV" arrived. Both are A3 size (vertical) which means that Gruppen is
actually more generous in size than the version I'm used to from the
library. The paper is maybe not such good quality as the library one I
had, but it's fine- and includes the photographs etc. from the earlier
print. I forget what size the earlier print of Notations was (the one in
4 'booklets' contained in a folder) but at A2, I suppose that's as good
as you can expect to get for a 'study score.' Most of it is OK, but a
few pages are almost indecipherable- I remember something similar from
the other copies though. However, it's spiral bound, which I find
incredibly disappointing. For 77 pages of music, I find that
unnecessarily cheap. (I noticed the same thing with the score for Berio
"Points on the curve to find'..." which has put me off buying it- that
and the silly price.

I don't see why Notations couldn't have been better printed, I suppose.
It compares rather poorly with Gruppen and several similar sized
orchestral scores I have from different publishers. (Ades "Asyla" is a
good example of a beautifully produced score- and at half the price
roughly of the Boulez.) The spiral bound copies are harder to store, and
just don't last as well...


This is becoming increasingly common, as I'm sure you're well aware, and it's a real shame. UE seem particularly bad at it - there are quite a few Birtwistle scores I'm reluctant to pay the exorbitant prices for because I've seen copies which are really badly printed (The Triumph of Time, for instance); cheaper printing methods are increasingly being used by publishers (most commonly a digital print-on-demand sort of arrangement), and these are generally at a much lower resolution than 'proper' printing; with books it's almost forgiveable, though unpleasant, since the text is still at least readable, but with music, especially big contemporary scores which have to use a tiny stave size and therefore the fine detail is all-important, suffer most. It's particularly unpleasant when the prices of some of these scores are ridiculously high - if they were finely printed and bound one might at least feel that it's worth it, but when you get something that looks worse than what you might print off at home (and not even on decent paper), it's just an insult; you'd be better off finding a second-hand copy, which at least would have been produced back in the day when anyone cared about production values, but these aren't, obviously, the sort of thing that often turn up second-hand.

(I do engrave scores for one of the big publishers (a one quite well known to you...) and have in fact been counselled to bear in mind that the effective printing resolution is 600dpi, and to design accordingly, which is a bit on the depressing side.)

Simon

Is there any reason why scores can't be sold electronically - ie as a PDF or some other format, so they could be printed in any desirable way?

I appreciate there's the issue of intellectual property protection, but it's not as if it's hard to duplicate a printed copy anyway, and there's always watermarks etc.

Some publishers sell scores for download, but it's normally small solo/chamber pieces; the probley with PDFs or whatever is that they can be shared to easily (with no loss of quality), whereas a photocopy is always a photocopy and never of quite the same quality as the original. Even allowing for a poor quality in the case of the original...

The other thing is that, ultimately, a score well printed and bound, on decent paper with good covers etc, is an object of beauty in itself and hard to reproduce (at least not cheaply!); I'd much rather buy that than a printable version to make up myself, even if a (reasonable) premium is charged for it.

Simon
.

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