What is the point of cutaway scores?

[Dave2002]

Stravinsky was using his wheel as early as 1912 when sketching 'Le Sacre' but his scores as late as 'Threni' , 1959 , were printed conventionally. 'Movements' may have been the first to be published in 'cutaway' format.

wheel?

[RichardB]

wheel?

See #2. Pay attention at the back!

[Ein Heldenleben]

It strikes me that one major advantage of not printing unused staves is a massive saving in printer ink. With a keen composer , score printer in the family I was always staggered how much ink music printing got through - particularly with hemi-semi- demi- quavers and the like…

[Bryn]

I believe one way they began was the use of a stave-wheel or raster to draw the stave on blank paper. Stravinsky used this in his later music, drawing a stave only where there were notes to put in . . .

"used"? Damn it, he invented and, IIRC, patented the Stravigor

[smittims]

Thanks, Bryn, I may have forgotten that.

I remember a five-niibbed pen on sale in the 1970s, which I used for a time. It was a clumsy thing and difficult to avoid smearing ink.

[Bryn]

Thanks, Bryn, I may have forgotten that.

I remember a five-niibbed pen on sale in the 1970s, which I used for a time. It was a clumsy thing and difficult to avoid smearing ink.

I think I originally read about Stravinsky's handy invention in Eric Water White's "Stravinsky: The Composer and his works" which I requested and got for my 21st birthday.

[Dave2002]

"Wheel"-I did wonder if it was a device to produce circular staves - such as the vibraphone/marimba instructions in this web site:

http://stockhausenspace.blogspot.com/2014/09/opus-9-zyklus.html

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Thanks, Bryn, I may have forgotten that.

I remember a five-niibbed pen on sale in the 1970s, which I used for a time. It was a clumsy thing and difficult to avoid smearing ink.

I had one of those. There was a knack in using them - the right amount of ink and even pressure could produce quite good results.

[RichardB]

I had one of those. There was a knack in using them - the right amount of ink and even pressure could produce quite good results.

I had one too but I have to say I didn't get the knack, one reason being that I didn't like the staves being so big, so I didn't bother to develop the ability to use it properly. Once I discovered the Panopus 18-stave pad in A3 landscape format there was no contest. (I see that it's still available, but produced by Faber.) Some others might remember that a few decades ago music manuscripts and parts were regularly produced on transparent manuscript paper, using india ink to which corrections could be made by scratching them out with a scalpel. There was a friendly little print shop at the top end of Hatton Garden which supplied such paper, and also printed the resulting music (using the diazo process which was also common in architectural graphics at that time).

Nowadays I never buy manuscript paper, but design and print my own according to ongoing requirements.

[Dave2002]

I had one too but I have to say I didn't get the knack, one reason being that I didn't like the staves being so big, so I didn't bother to develop the ability to use it properly. Once I discovered the Panopus 18-stave pad in A3 landscape format there was no contest. (I see that it's still available, but produced by Faber.) Some others might remember that a few decades ago music manuscripts and parts were regularly produced on transparent manuscript paper, using india ink to which corrections could be made by scratching them out with a scalpel. There was a friendly little print shop at the top end of Hatton Garden which supplied such paper, and also printed the resulting music (using the diazo process which was also common in architectural graphics at that time).

Nowadays I never buy manuscript paper, but design and print my own according to ongoing requirements.

There are now available erasable notebooks, which work with some gel pens. They are quite pleasant to use and occasionally useful. Some come with pre-printed pages - usually for forms which I have no particular interest in using - though I write over them anyway. It would presumably be possible to make such a book with pre-printed music staves rather than address lists, to do lists etc., but I suspect that the general market for such music oriented notebooks is so small that they won't happen.