It would be great if Dorico could have options for automatically handling the following preferences for rendering accidentals in choral/vocal music. Of course, these can all easily be handled manually, but adding some Dorico smarts in the form of notation preferences would be even better.
These improvements would not need to apply to instrumental music where multiple voices are performed by the same performer. Therefore, it would be good if these options could be a per-staff-type setting within the same score, similar to the option which places dynamics above the staff for vocal music and below the staff for instrumental music.
That would mean, for instance, that the choral parts of a SATB+piano score would treat accidentals in one way, while the piano part would treat them in a different way, in the above contexts.
Here are the requests:
Modifications in different voices: When two voices are used to represent two different performers/groups, as is usually the case in choral music, if a note is modified in voice 1 (say) and the same note comes again later in the bar in voice 2, that second note should also be explicitly modified â because there is no expectation that the voice 2 performers should have been watching other voices while singing. (That repeated accidental would be redundant in music where all voices are read by the same player.)
Vertical awareness: When two different instruments (on different staves) have the same note within close proximity, but one of those notes is modified and the other isnât, courtesy accidentals should be placed on the unmodified notes. This is obviously only an issue where the parts used for performance contain multiple parts, which is universal in choral music. In choral music, singers often look at whatâs going on in other parts in order to improve their own pitching and tuning, so seeing, for instance, a C# in a different part can be confusing if you are expected to sing a C-natural at the same moment.
Different brackets rules for vocal staves: Dorico already provides an option to put courtesy accidentals in brackets (parenthesis) or not. It would be helpful if it were possible to set this option one way for instruments, and another way for voices. Rationale: Singers, especially when unaccompanied, often use a conscious awareness of key and tonality to help pitch their notes. So it can be very helpful to a singer to understand at a glance whether an accidental is essential (i.e. it modifies the note in the current tonal context) or courtesy (i.e. it restores the note to its normal role in the current tonal context). Instruments usually donât need this, since for performers in the moment, a C# is a C# and who cares about tonal context. Therefore, it would be good if vocal staves could have the bracket options switched on to help sight-singing, while instrumental staves could have it switched off to save clutter, within the same score.
I donât believe these have already been proposed here, though my search might not have been exhaustive.
This also applies to divisis in string parts: if subsections are notated as separate voices on 1 staff, theyâd better have their own accidentals.
Sorry, I strongly disagree. Instrumentalists also project their notes based on tonal awareness and other aspects of musical context, including what they hear in other parts. If I hear a C# in a different part, I may accidentally also play one, even when my part has an implied C. A cautionary accidental would be quite useful there. Weâre not mechanically pressing buttons without knowing what we (want to) hear beforehand.
Thatâs a very fair point, but not quite what I was saying. I agree with you that instrumentalists still benefit from courtesy accidentals to avoid the kind of mistake youâre describing (though maybe thereâs still a relevant difference between the signal that one gets from seeing a C# elsewhere in the score, and hearing one elsewhere in the ensemble? Not sure).
But in any case, the part of my post that you quoted was not about whether courtesy accidentals should be marked or not, for either instruments or singers. It was about whether they should be marked with or without or brackets. My point was that, when it comes to accidentals for singers who are pitching based on tonal awareness, brackets can be used to communicate âthis is a cautionary in line with the current key signatureâ while no brackets can be used to communicate âthis is a modified note away from the current key signatureâ.
This means that brackets vs no brackets can make a material difference to singersâ performance. I am not sure I can think of an example where it would make a material difference to instrumentalistsâ performance; though Iâm happy to be enlightened!
Edit: maybe it can make a difference to non-equal-temperament instruments such as fretless strings?
I find your line of reasoning clear, but the practical application of it to real choral singers very doubtful. In my decades of choral experience (in the U.S.), the situation has never improved, but continues to get worse: Singers without high-level instrumental training tend to see any accidental on a note as meaning ânot how you think it soundsâ. There is often no ability to distinguish confirming vs. contradicting â if there is any awareness of the key sig in the first place. Most choral singers are learning by ear the whole time.
My conclusion from decades of copying choral music is that correct and clear editorial pleases composers, editors and other trained musicians, but makes little difference to most of the singers. Music education in Europe and Asia is much better, so take my experience with a grain of salt.
One distinction is that singers mostly have a (choral) score, and, depending on their reading skills and theoretical proficiency, may glean useful notes for their own intonation from other parts, where an instrumentalist (like me) may be led by their ears alone. For the rest, Iâm not sure the use of explicit vs. cautionary accidentals is so different between us.
BTW, I often encounter cautionary accidentals unbracketed. They often make sense to disambiguate something. A bracketed accidental may also mean sic, i.e.: this may sound weird, but itâs what the composer wanted.
Fretless instruments definitely have rich possibilities in adjusting their intonation depending on harmonic context (I can show you the visible difference between a Gb and an F#, it may amount to roughly a centimetre in first position on my cello), but that doesnât depend on whether or how an accidental is shown.
I like this. It is indeed a different use of brackets vs non-brackets from my suggestion (which was courtesy vs non-courtesy). I suppose we may be expecting a bit much from Dorico, though, to ask for an automated function which detects âweird but intentionalâ harmonies and deploys brackets accordingly
