I’m about to start work on an early classical choral/orchestral piece where the timpani part is transposed, analogous to brass and woodwind writing for transposing instruments.
The practice was fairly common at the time.
As far as I know, Dorico only caters for the timpani notes being written in concert pitch, ie sounding as written.
Does anybody have any clues as to an approach which will avoid the need to transpose the part up a note if accurate playback is required (and hopefully not forgetting to transpose it back down again to retain the original [“authentic”] visual aspect).
One method I could use is to have two timpani parts - a transposed one to show on the score and part, but excluded from playback, and the concert-pitch one hidden from the score and part, but included in playback.
The “easy” way, of course, is just to notate it as sounding and not be bothered too much about the appearance. All timpanists I have ever met have been quite capable of figuring out what notes to play.
Any suggestions are welcome and will be given due consideration.