[MEI-L] Colla parte

Sat Sep 3 17:43:01 CEST 2011

Raffaele said --

"Using sic / corr or orig / reg or abbr / expan seems a bit odd to me as well, because it's not a matter of replacing one (or many) symbol(s) with another (or many others) for the purpose of correcting, regularizing or expanding, but it's a matter of making more explicit the meaning of a less-standard sign."

I could be convinced that <supplied> doesn't exactly match this particular case; however, isn't "making more explicit" the meaning of something exactly what correcting, regularizing and expanding do?  For instance, if I mark "P.R." as an abbreviation and "Perry Roland" as its expansion, am I not making the meaning of "P.R." more explicit?

I think a case could be made that Weber's slash is an abbreviation which is expanded in another instrumental part, i.e.,

<measure>
 <staff n="1">
   <layer>
     <choice>
       <abbr> <!-- some repetition sign(s) here --> </abbr>
       <expan> <!-- a copy of the content of the bass part --> </expan>
     </choice>
   </layer>
 </staff>
 <dir staff="1" tstamp="1">col Basso</dir>
 <!-- instead of the words there might be a <line> -->
</measure>

I also think the combination of <orig> and <reg> works.  TEI says <reg> contains "a reading which has been regularized or normalized in some sense." The Guidelines say "When the source text makes extensive use of variant forms or non-standard spellings, it may be desirable for a number of reasons to regularize it: that is, to provide ‘standard’ or ‘regularized’ forms equivalent to the non-standard forms." The question is, is the "fleshing-out" of Weber's slash (a "non-standard" symbol by your own admission) a regularization / normalization?  If not, why?  What's wrong with --

<measure>
 <staff n="1">
   <layer>
     <choice>
       <orig> <!-- some repetition sign(s) here --> </orig>
       <reg> <!-- a copy of the content of the bass part --> </reg>
     </choice>
   </layer>
 </staff>
 <dir staff="1" tstamp="1">col Basso</dir>
 <!-- instead of the words there might be a <line> -->
</measure>

I believe either of these solutions works, especially with some good explanation in the MEI guidelines.

NOTE: It's especially important to note that in either case, unlike Raffaele's <colla> example -- 
      <colla target="#STAFFid">col Basso</colla>
the words "col Basso" (or the wiggly line, whatever) remain separate from the realization encoding.  To do otherwise, would wreak havoc upon the distinction between events and control events that's built into MEI.  Unless someone WANTS to start over from scratch. :)

BUT, what the content of <expan> or <reg> should be is a different question.  In the examples above and in the examples in the TEI guidelines, the content is explicitly stated; that is, every misspelling of the same word carries the same regularization.

For those situations where the regularization exists elsewhere in the encoding, we could create a generic, "go-get-something-and-put-it-here" element.  I only suggested the name "colla" as a discussion-starter.  I believe it probably needs a more generic name, perhaps "copyOf", that would allow it to function in cases other than just colla parte.  Eleanor's point about references occuring just about anywhere is correct, although there's only so far we can go and maintain explicit markup.  Followed to the extreme, the markup becomes entirely procedural, not a good thing.  Already, the <copyOf> element introduces the same problems @copyof, namely, which parts of the target should actually be copied -- certainly not the target's @xml:id and probably not it's @n either.

For the time being, I'd prefer solutions such as those above that use existing elements / attributes in order not to delay the next release.  We can take up the question of a "copyOf" element and the philosophical issues related to what a regularization "really" is later.

--
p.

__________________________
Perry Roland
Music Library
University of Virginia
P. O. Box 400175
Charlottesville, VA 22904
434-982-2702 (w)
pdr4h (at) virginia (dot) edu

From: mei-l-bounces at lists.uni-paderborn.de [mei-l-bounces at lists.uni-paderborn.de] on behalf of Raffaele Viglianti [raffaeleviglianti at gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2011 6:58 AM
To: Music Encoding Initiative
Subject: Re: [MEI-L] Colla parte

Dear Joachim and all, 

Having had the opportunity to look at other parts of der Freischuetz manuscript, I think one might look at this situation in another way: the symbols  // or .//., etc. actually indicate to look back at the previous measure. 
Also in the case that described, I am inclined to think that // actually means a repetition of the instruction col basso to be found in the previous measure.

Given this interpretation, it is sufficient to define what "col Basso" does, and the repetition symbols will just copy over the same meaning.
Basically, if col Basso in this context means "play the current measure at the Basso staff" (which is different from "play the measure with xml:id='foo'"), the same meaning will be repeated by // in the following measure.

To define what col Basso does, an element like the one suggested by Perry might be useful. Perhaps <colla target="#STAFFid">col Basso</colla> or similar.

Regarding <supplied>, I think we need to clarify better its role and align it with TEI as much as possible. Perry's use seems a bit incorrect to me, because the element should be used to supply text that cannot be read or is not there at all and should be. In this case the symbol is there, the editor makes its meaning explicit. An element like <colla> that would somehow include the objections of the people at the back of the room, might be sufficient to make explicit the meaning of the symbol in question. 

Using sic / corr or orig / reg or abbr / expan seems a bit odd to me as well, because it's not a matter of replacing one (or many) symbol(s) with another (or many others) for the purpose of correcting, regularizing or expanding, but it's a matter of making more explicit the meaning of a less-standard sign.

Hope this helps!

Raffaele

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 11:58 PM, Roland, Perry (pdr4h) <pdr4h at eservices.virginia.edu> wrote:

Hi Joachim,

Let me re-state the issue to see if I understand it correctly --

1. Weber (is there any other composer worth talking about?) draws some version of a slash-symbol-thing to indicate that the current measure should be filled in with material from another instrument.

2. You want to record the original version (with the slash symbol) and give its "expansion" (as it were)?

First, are you sure this problem can't be resolved using <orig> and <supplied> (or perhaps <reg>)?  For example, each measure of the flute part might be encoded --

<measure>
 <staff n="1">
   <layer>
     <choice>
       <orig> <!-- some repetition sign(s) here --> </orig>
       <supplied> <!-- a copy of the content of the vln. part --> </supplied>
     </choice>
   </layer>
 </staff>
<dir staff="1" tstamp="1">colla parte ...</dir>
<!-- instead of the words there might be a <line> -->
</measure>

This seems like a good solution to me because it is explict.

I'm using <supplied> because the actual substitution doesn't take place in the score, there's only an indication that it "ought" to happen. Actually making it happen is up to the editor -- the human being, not the software.

Of course, what's missing is a link between the <supplied> element and the words "colla ..." (or a "wiggly" line), which I presume is in the flute part). At present, the editorial intervention can only be explained in the editorialDecl.  But, if we put our heads together, we might be able to think of another method of linking these.  (Perhaps with an <annotation>, which has pointers to the "participants"; that is, the <supplied> and <dir> elements, and a type attribute value of "collaparte"?)

I don't know if you remember, but MEI originally had a different definition for <mRpt>.  It didn't necessarily indicate the repetition of the preceding measure, but rather the repetition *of any other measure*, "repetition" being defined somewhat loosely, of course.  This definition went the way of the dodo bird when the editorial elements (add, del, orig, reg, etc.) were added since the attribute (don't remember what it was called off the top of my head) pointing to the source measure duplicated these editorial elements' function.

However, I recognize that there's currently no good way of implementing a reference to content given elsewhere in the document.  So, perhaps we should consider adding such a specialized element.  In the example above, the content of <supplied> would be the <colla> (or some such name) element.

<measure n="1">
 <staff>
   <layer>
     <choice>
       <orig> <!-- some repetition sign(s) here --> </orig>
       <supplied> <colla/> </supplied>
     </choice>
   </layer>
 </staff>
</measure>

Of course, it would need an attribute pointing to the content of the vln. part.  In a way, this element would be similar to <ref>, although  <ref> is intended for navigation, while <colla> indicates "go get the content and put it here."  This is also not unlike internal parsed entities. This element would also need to be related to the <dir> or <line> elements. We could think about using its generic corresp attribute or give it a new, specialized attribute.

(I can already hear some noises in the back of the room about some attribute or attributes for describing whatever transformation must be applied to the source, such as "transposed up a 5th", "inverted and retrograde", etc.  I'm not ready to go there yet!  There be dragons!)

It might also need a more generic name than "colla".  Then it could be used for other situations where content given in one location needs to be referenced in some other.  Can't think of a good name off the top of my head, too late in the day.

Just in case someone asks, I don't think XInclude can point to a location in the current document.

Enough to think about for the weekend?  :)

--
p.

__________________________
Perry Roland
Music Library
University of Virginia
P. O. Box 400175
Charlottesville, VA 22904
434-982-2702 (w)
pdr4h (at) virginia (dot) edu
________________________________________
From: mei-l-bounces at lists.uni-paderborn.de [mei-l-bounces at lists.uni-paderborn.de] on behalf of Joachim Veit [veit at weber-gesamtausgabe.de]
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 3:43 PM
To: mei-l at lists.uni-paderborn.de
Subject: [MEI-L] Colla parte

Dear MEI-L-Readers,

when encoding manuscripts MEI has the possibility to encode
measure-repeats or half-measure-repeats which are found in the original
manuscripts in a form similar to: // or .//.  (two strokes through the
barlines or something similar) with <mrpt> or <halfmrpt>. This has
always a clear reference to the bar (or half-bar) before.

The same symbols are used in manuscripts in combination with the "col
Basso" or other "colla-parte"-instructions.
Again in Weber's Freischuetz-Overture (we never do something other...)
we have a contrabbasso with <staff n="16"> and above this the
violoncello with <staff n="15>. Weber notates the contrabbasso in a
normal way and in the cello-staff we find only "c. B." (= bar 1) and
afterwards //   //    // etc.
For a modern edition we could label the layer of the contrabbasso with
an xml:id="2011" and put in the layer of staff 15: <layer n="1"
copyof="2011"/>.

But in this case we want to encode the "original" situation! So we first
have to define in the scoredef:
<scoredef>....
<symboltable>
<symboldef xml:id="symCollaParte"/> 
</symboltable>
</scoredef>

and within our staff 15:
<staff n="15">
<layer n="1">
<symbol ref="symCollaParte"/>
</layer>
</staff>
In this case the reference is not always clear: it might go to the staff
below (as in this case) or the staff above (if the cello is written out
and the cb-staff is pointing to the cello) or even from a flute to the
first violin 5 systems below. So there should be some mechanism to make
clear where the model is situated. And second: We should have the
possibility to use "c. B." (or something similar) as a symbol-phrase
(which at the same time "defines" the model) and for the following bars
simply use "//" (or something similar) (maybe even one symbol for 2-3
bars together??).
Is this case already considered in the future guidelines?

Best greetings and a happy weekend,
Joachim

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