Re: A must-see for anybody on this list

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 02/14/2013 05:32 PM, Urs Liska wrote:
> Maybe I'll get in touch with you before. I already intended to present the
> outline of the presentation here and ask for feedback - I think it's an issue
> that concerns many of us ...
> (The presentation is due at the end of April, so it will be some time still).

That'd be great.  There's a paper I'm working on right now (not oriented towards 
music) which I'll try and share with you when it's done -- might be useful 
despite its different orientation.

>  From the discussion on this list I assume that there are two very different
> 'stages' to this. One is the raw musical content, which seems to be quite easily
> converted (I think something like an XSLT-like transformation of LilyPond's
> music stream).
> If one wants to also export LilyPond's layout qualities it would be much more
> intricate because at the time LilyPond makes its layout decisions that music
> stream isn't available anymore.

What I was thinking of was e.g. how well the conversion process would preserve 
articulations, ornaments, etc.  Some layout aspects here have "raw musical 
content" value, e.g. think of a turn that is placed on the second half of a note.

> Preparing a "manuscript" with LilyPond isn't the way to go because nowadays many
> (most) publishers won't pay engraving staff when they also can get editors doing
> that work for free. (This actually is the reason I didn't get a contract for
> editing a few works for UE).

True with composers too, I think.  I remember about 14 years back a friend told 
me that his publisher had got in touch with him and said, "OK, we're going to 
buy you a copy of Finale.  The quid pro quo is that now you do all your own 
score preparation."

Then again, when you go to many 20th-century works, the score is often just a 
facsimile of the composer's fair copy.