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Editorial: ‘Divided by a Common Language’

Editorial: ‘Divided by a Common Language’ For some years – decades – I have lived on the terminological and orthographical boundary between American and British musicology. As editor of the English‐language Meisterwerk in der Musik , published in Britain, I spent many evenings changing ‘sixteenth notes’ to ‘semiquavers’, ‘mm.’ to ‘bars’, em dashes to en dashes surrounded by spaces, and double quotation marks to inverted commas; as editor of this journal, I continue to do the same. (I once attempted to take revenge on the situation by entitling a conference paper ‘ “Dvořák's ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata” ’, which would have required three sets of quotation marks to be reversed when it was transferred from British to American style. All to no avail: the editors of the conference volume retitled my paper.) I have observed a limited amount of convergence in music‐theory terminology since I arrived in this country to help edit the New Grove Dictionary of Musicians . My supervisor there was a hard‐line Englishman, whose motto ‘Never say “neighbour note”!’ held sway throughout the 1970s. But with the advent of publications such as this journal, the expression gained a foothold here; and, to judge from recent issues, ‘auxiliary note’ seems on the way out. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Music Analysis Wiley

Editorial: ‘Divided by a Common Language’

Music Analysis , Volume 32 (1) – Mar 1, 2013
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Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Music Analysis © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
ISSN
0262-5245
eISSN
1468-2249
DOI
10.1111/musa.12010
Publisher site
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Abstract

For some years – decades – I have lived on the terminological and orthographical boundary between American and British musicology. As editor of the English‐language Meisterwerk in der Musik , published in Britain, I spent many evenings changing ‘sixteenth notes’ to ‘semiquavers’, ‘mm.’ to ‘bars’, em dashes to en dashes surrounded by spaces, and double quotation marks to inverted commas; as editor of this journal, I continue to do the same. (I once attempted to take revenge on the situation by entitling a conference paper ‘ “Dvořák's ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata” ’, which would have required three sets of quotation marks to be reversed when it was transferred from British to American style. All to no avail: the editors of the conference volume retitled my paper.) I have observed a limited amount of convergence in music‐theory terminology since I arrived in this country to help edit the New Grove Dictionary of Musicians . My supervisor there was a hard‐line Englishman, whose motto ‘Never say “neighbour note”!’ held sway throughout the 1970s. But with the advent of publications such as this journal, the expression gained a foothold here; and, to judge from recent issues, ‘auxiliary note’ seems on the way out.

Journal

Music Analysis – Wiley

Published: Mar 1, 2013

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