Unusually - it seems - I am an editor of old music not (usually) a composer of new… When it comes to showing that not all the words were written under all of the notes, I have been used to using italics. Same if an abbreviation is used or - more unusually - a symbol such as ô meaning “nicht” in German. Is this possible in Dorico? I’ve hunted high and low but can’t find anything that will allow me this flexibility. Thanks for any guidance!
Yes: there’s a checkbox for Italic in the Properties panel, when you have a lyric selected. You could alternatively use an Italic font for the Chorus or Translation Font Styles, and set the lyrics in those types of lyric.
Hadn’t spotted that - hadn’t thought to look there, if I’m honest! Great news though - thanks (again!)
Doesn’t quite solve the problem of do-mi-n9 becoming do-mi-nus though… Any ideas for that?
Unfortunately you cannot make only one or two letters of an individual lyric italicised. You’ll have to use Shift+X text in place of a lyric for that.
I’m really intrigued by this shorthand. I’m not really interested in German shortcuts, but can you point me to an example wher domin9 is a thing? I deal with ecclesial Latin quite a bit and the only thing I’ve ever seen (and found it ill-conceived) was “&” for “et”.
I have seen this, in medieval manuscripts. To be honest, as with &, these and other symbols (like X for Christ, or a line over letters for m) are just shorthands, or stylised symbols. There’s no ambiguity in what the word is, so it’s not an editorial choice. And in a scholarly edition, the italic doesn’t tell the reader what was there in its place, without a commentary, which is arguably enough by itself.
I was wondering if these were special ligatures that have fallen out of favor (like æ for instance).
Edit: just did some yahoogling and found this, just in case anyone else finds themselves curious as I was. Scribal abbreviation - Wikipedia
Why don’t you think the italics tell a reader what was there; in all three cases that you gave, it would tell them exactly what was there. And if (and I take your point that it’s not exactly an “editorial choice”) I don’t show the transformation from X to Christ somehow, how is anyone to know that I “edited” anything, so what is the point of editing old music at all. Everyone can just learn to read facsimiles and sing from clefs and be done with it. What about idem markings (for example, ij)? My basic problem is that I think it is my job to show absolutely as clearly as possible when I have altered the musical notation when editing 17th- and 18th-century music, and I think it would be remiss of me not to pay similar care to the text.
Obviously I don’t know how difficult it would be to incorporate, but couldn’t some sort of on-and-off escape character set be used “do- mi- n%ius%i,” for example?
They’re not limited to music of that period, though - they’re used in 17th-century Italian prints and manuscripts and I frequently encounter them in cantata manuscripts by Bach’s contemporaries
The point, I would argue, is to translate it to modern notation so they don’t have to learn to read facsimiles.
There is plenty in any edition that is silently not as the original. Tied notes over every system break, if not barline, for example.
I guess it’s just a question of the degree of where you draw the line, and the usefulness of the information conveyed. Do you mark where there was a Long S in the source?
You use a modern minim symbol to represent old mimim symbols in the source. Potentially, the meaning of the two may be different. It’s no greater stretch to represent the old 9 shorthand with ‘us’, without further comment.