Today, I was rehearsing Vivaldi's solo cantata "Cessate, omai, cessate" with a small baroque ensemble, and the way the piece is constructed makes very unweildy page turns inevitable for the string players - esp. the violinists. What they've ended up having to do is tape pages of the score together, folding them this way and that so they can flip them back and forth for the various dal segno and da capo repeats. So there's music hanging off either side of their music stands, and they're all having to use width extenders on the stands, and it's frankly just a mess. Life isn't much easier for the harpsichordist, who is working from pages of the full score. But at least she can have a page turner.
The first violinist mentioned having heard about these Kindle-like devices on which the digitised score could be stored and displayed, and instead of turning pages, the player would only have to tap the "turn page" button (or something like).
So here's one situation in which I think it would be a bonus to have that device IF:
1) I can scan and digitise my own hardcopy scores into the device - this would eliminate the concern over "which edition?" - I would scan whatever edition I wanted to work with. A lot of scanning for a big work, yes - but if the publisher isn't going to digitise the work for the device, at least I'd have the option.
2) The ability to "write on the score" is essential! If it needs a stylus to do this, so be it. Just make sure those styluses are cheap and easy to replace because you KNOW they're going to get lost.
In the meantime, I'm thinking of hiring four short musicians who can read upside down to stand over each string player's music stand and flip pages as they play.
--
Karen Mercedes - contralto
singwiththespirit [at] yahoo [dot] com
http://artfuljesus.0catch.com/karenmercedes.html
