Key features and bar-level commentary
'Key features' are identified for the majority of the opuses in OCVE, for which 'bar-level commentary' is also provided. These two types of information have certain characteristics in common with a conventional critical commentary, but there are notable differences as well which are discussed below.
In addition to highlighting salient details of a given source, the 'Key features' text typically provides relevant background information to it. Reference may be made under this heading to other sources (whether or not they appear in OCVE) for the sake of comparison. Significant modifications and errors will usually be highlighted; however, in no case is the discussion exhaustive, nor – as noted above – are 'Key features' identified for all OCVE sources.
The reason for this selectivity has to do with the purpose of the scholarly apparatus within OCVE. The inclusion of such an apparatus was not envisaged at the pilot stage, although in response to user feedback the project team did include a range of 'comments' along the lines of those in a conventional critical commentary even though the method for displaying them was not satisfactory. In the first developmental phase of the project, more sophisticated display techniques were devised, as described below and in Using OCVE. The main aim of the comments that have been provided, however, is to give an indication to other users of the sorts of comparative study that a variorum edition invites and to some extent requires. Rather than provide comparative commentary across the board, the project team has therefore selected a number of works to this end. In addition, users themselves have a range of annotation tools at their disposal, allowing them to create their own 'critical commentaries' either along the lines of the scholarly apparatus here or in a more individual fashion. In any case, the fact that the scholarly commentary is not comprehensive helps to avoid the prescriptive tendency characteristic of many printed editions, in which the editor's decisions and judgements inevitably prevail, thereby informing for better or worse the understanding of those who use the particular edition.
It could be argued that standard critical commentaries have four main functions:
- providing information about the sources that have been used or that otherwise exist for the work(s) in question
- identifying the strategies used by the editor with regard to designated sources
- justifying individual decisions in respect of the music text
- reporting on relevant variants and corrections of errors and omissions in one or more sources.
Only the last of these functions applies to the bar-level commentary in OCVE. Information about the sources is provided under the eponymous heading and within the 'Key features' text. OCVE's editorial approach is of course neutral in respect of the available sources, in that these are presented without qualitative judgements being made in terms of hierarchy or respective pre-eminence. As OCVE is not presenting a single version of a music text, individual decisions are not required. We do, however, report on relevant variants and corrections of errors and omissions in one or more sources, and typically the user is invited to compare one source with another when looking at a set of comments (e.g. with regard to 23–1-Sm: 'All of the distinctive features of F1 described in the bar-level commentary should be compared with their counterparts in A').
In the bar-level comments an oblique (/) is used when a given observation applies to more than one part (e.g. 'RH/LH' refers to both RH and LH). When a given feature is found in a number of individual bars, these are listed separately; when a feature spans two or more bars, the latter are identified in the form 'bs x–y', i.e. with the relevant bar numbers joined by a dash.
Pitch register is specified using the Helmholtz system (with superscript arabic numerals rather than primes); where relevant the stated register takes into account a prevailing ottava.
OCVE employs a precise and unambiguous means of identifying individual notes and chords within a bar by defining their position in terms of the event therein. Thus, if for example the first right-hand 'event' is a single note, followed by an octave and then a three-note chord, these would respectively be identified as RH note 1, RH chord 2 and RH chord 3. (Note that for reasons of economy the term 'chord' is also used for dyads.)