I’m having a go at engraving the prelude of Das Rheingold for fun, and I’ve run into a problem - when doing the famous opening arpeggio, the Eb horns use both bass clef and treble. Trouble is, in bass clef, they should transpose up a minor third, and in treble, down a major sixth. Is there any way to achieve this in Dorico? Or do I just have to eschew the playback for this one?
You can set the “Octave shift” property for a clef, and this property has a different value for transposed and non-transposed layouts.
Thanks, that’s that problem solved. Now, a different one - is is possible to manually change the order of staves? In the Das Rheingold score available on IMSLP (and the one I own), on the first page, the contrabasses and bassoons appear below the horns, as seen below.
However, on page 2, when more staves are seen, the bassoons appear at the top of the score with the flutes, above the horns, as seen here:
Is it possible to recreate this?
Yes, if you create 3 additional bassoon players (only for page 2 and onwards) and then hide/show them respectively .
Thank you - I should have thought of that!
Is there a way to fake the numbering so they show up as Bassoon 1, 2, and 3, rather than 4, 5, and 6?
I really have to ask why you would want to. The other version on IMSLP follows the normal orchestral order…
I think this score generally follows a principle of grouping similar musical material, which I quite like - either way, it’s fun to see what Dorico is capable of!
No. It subverts the order for a single page then resumes the normal order for the remaining 326 pages.
Sorry, my mistake - I’m not very good at recalling score order off hand!
Janus, it is possible, this (early) Schott edition from 1873 is trying to replicate the original score order of R. Wagner’s manuscript. I’ll try to find a copy of it.
[edit] out of luck: “The autograph of the score has been lost since the Second World War”.
I personally like the idea, how the “drone” is kept at the bottom, like the mud of the Rhine…
As you mention earlier, later editions (also by Schott) restore a traditional instrument order on the first page:
Back in luck: I don’t know where the German Wikipedia page got the prior information from, but here is a first draft by the composer himself, written in Zurich (Zürich) 1st of February 1854:
To take a closer look:
Nachlass Richard und Cosima Wagner / Das Rheingold, eigenhändige... [1
Thanks. That is most interesting. Yes, he puts the Bassoon pedal at the bottom of the score. But he then scores the Horn arpeggios without respecting the bass/treble clef transposition convention mentioned in the OP (unless I’m misreading)!
There is a quite detailed Wikipedia article just about the composition process of the Ring, and without revisiting it, I would guess that this information literally refers to the final Fair Copy, while the numerous preliminary stages (many of which are already very meticulously worked-out short scores) may have survived.