My next Dorico project: piece for cello and orchestra (maybe)

Dorico
1

My first piece in Dorico post Finale was done during May and June. It was a completely new c.17 minute piece for two singers, actor-narrator and piano of about 350 bars with an appendix of a further 75 or so bars. I learnt quite a lot about how to use the software in the process, and a lot more about what not to do. I also picked up some fairly comprehensive ideas about how to manage a more compact layout next time (especially as regards vertical space).

Then I imported to Dorico via xml a piece of roughly 300 bars for solo violin. Originally written in manuscript in 1992 and typeset in Finale in 2001 (not very well) and resaved in Finale 27. This needed some adjustment in Dorico, but a great deal less than I had feared.

There are various possibilities, larger or smaller, for my next Dorico project. But for a number of reasons, I’d most like to attempt to typeset a piece which is in photocopied manuscript score with hand copied parts, and which I wrote in 1983.

This piece is around 19 minutes long and has 366 bars. It is a set of variations for solo cello plus a modest orchestra of 2 (2=picc), 2, 2, 2; 2, 2, 0, 0; timpani, 1 percussion; strings (a note at the beginning of the score asks for ‘Mozartian strings’, which I left open to interpretation). The 1 percussion player is only needed if the timpanist is unwilling to play triangle as well.

The wind and brass are variously on individual staves or on a single stave for each pair, changing frequently from system to system. The violas periodically divide into two or sometime three parts. For a few bars, the leader (concert master) plays solo violin, while his tutti first violin section is also playing. Apart from this and the violas, there are no other subdivisions of the five standard string parts.

My manuscript score never seems to need more than sixteen staves for a system.

The piece has many changes of tempo and time signature, a fair bit of tempo flexibility with fermatas, cesuras and indications of colla parte etc. However, the notation is entirely standard and without specialist complexities.

Maybe I’m being too ambitious at this stage of my using Dorico (plus I am 85 years old), but I’d like to engrave this piece in Dorico, provide a new set of parts and a completely re-conceived piano reduction (for cellist’s rehearsal).

Any thoughts? Advice?

I work best when challenged, but given my age et al I probably shouldn’t overdo that.

It would be difficult for me to scan from my full score, but if remotely relevant for judging what I might be about to let myself in for, this should link to a recording of a live performance in 1984 http://composers-uk.com/davidward/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/04-Variations.mp3?_=7 The cellist is Ross Pople who also played the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations at the same concert in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London.

Off topic, but FWIW a number of press were at this performance (which might be less likely today). Several (not all) of them thought my piece ‘middle of the road’. I wonder if it would be thought middle of the road nowadays? Or indeed whether that should matter?

2

It sounds like there’s nothing in there which Dorico can’t handle. For the double winds and brass you may be dealing with the complexities of the Condensing function. There are numerous tutorials available about that, both in written and video form, but the gist of it is: input every player in an individual staff (which becomes that player’s part in the end), and then worry about combining them only when engraving the full score. Technically the software does this for you automatically (based on an array of global settings in Notation Options) but you’ll have to be prepared to guide Dorico along the right path sometimes with phrase breaks and other overrides.

It’s also worth looking into Dorico’s Divisi functionality to get your head around that before starting the typeset, but as it sounds like your requirements in this area are relatively simple I think that will be straightforward enough as well.

Regarding the time and tempo variations, again Dorico will most likely offer enough flexibility to input all of them. However, not everything will be accurately reflected in the playback automatically so if that’s of importance to you, be prepared for some extra work with hidden tempo changes or the Key Editor.

Best of luck with this project, and of course we’ll be here happy to answer any questions.

3

Thank you, that’s useful information.

A potential very minor problem might perhaps come from the fact that the second flute doubles on piccolo (there are no other woodwind doublings). In my manuscript the piccolo goes to the top of the score in passages where it is used. I’ve noticed several threads on this forum suggesting that that may complicate things a little. Anyway, I don’t really mind if the piccolo stays in the second flute score position, if that makes things simpler to set up.

4

Don’t worry about it. Use a separate player for the piccolo and put it in score order. You can create a part layout that has both Piccolo and 2nd Flute later.

Also, and this might sound odd but… When starting your transcription, you will probably find it easier to enter each ‘condensed’ line in the score as just two different voices on a single stave (because that’s what your score looks like). So begin your setup with just single winds. Then, when all the notes are in, add the other players and move the relevant notes across. (This is extremely quick using Dorico’s filter and move functions)

Have fun. We’ll be here to help you if you get stuck.

5

Keeping the piccolo in the second flute position does make things simpler to set up though: you can then make use of Dorico’s built-in Instrument Change functionality instead of having to manage it yourself with text objects and manual staff visibility. And there are plenty of scores where the piccolo happily lives below Flute 1, even without doubling, so no worries there.

6

But you are approaching the problem from the wrong direction.

Transcribing an existing score is so much easier if the setup follows that score.

Moving the instrument to a different player, later on in the process, is a trivially simple, whereas having to enter the notes into a different stave in the ‘wrong’ position is mentally challenging (at least for us more elderly folks).

7

Thank you both: there seem to be one or two things to ponder here.

8

To me it sounds quite romantic and colourful, a bit cinematic perhaps. None of those are in any way value judgements. I wasn’t around in mid-1980s UK in order to know the landscape of new music at the time, but it seems to me the journalist was maybe expecting something more avant-garde and impenetrable and couldn’t come up with another diplomatic way of stating that. I like to think that there’s a lot less sectarianism between genres nowadays, and it might be more ‘acceptable’ to write something that’s reasonably accessible. But of course all of this mattered then as little as it does now—if it sounds good, it is good.

9

Thank you.