Re: Piano pedalling in (conductor) scores

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Kira,

> If it’s for a whole section, either it’s the composer or the orchestra 
> librarian. Who cares of the conductor changes it, that’s their choice. 
>  If it’s for a single player like a keyboardist, I would be inclined to leave 
> more open to the player - I am a keyboardist with relatively small hands, and 
> many times I physically can’t do the fingerings the composer puts in, and so 
> printed fingerings do clutter the score when I have to just cross them out.😁 
> Also, pedaling may change based on the acoustics of the room… 

Yep. Over-marking is a hallmark of 20th Century [mostly academic, ivory-tower] 
thinking. The norm nowadays is to reduce markings to the bare minimum, and 
actually trust the musicians to… you know… make music. ;)

Really, this is just the pendulum swinging back to pre-Romantic practice, which 
[rightly] entrusted a huge amount of performative latitude and trust to the 
performer, instead of dictating every dot and dash and dot-dash [etc.] “from on 
high”.

Cheers,
Kieren.