who would attend a Printing-presse...
The Primary Goal: To provide accurate and scholarly, but accessible and free-to-view online multimedia/graphic/text editions of Scottish musical sources presented in as original a form as possible, without any unnecessary, invasive or mis-representative editorial alterations to their original content, particularly with regard to their original arrangements and other stylistic features. This means:
(1) Never removing any significant original content;
(2) Never adding any mis-representative new content.
In other words: What You See is What Was Written by the original creator of the original source. Towards achieving this goal, three main editorial approaches have been adopted, depending mostly on a balance between the unique requirements of each original source and the actual purpose of each new edition. The following discussions of my methods mainly deal with my editions of musical scores, although the general tenor applies equally to my editions of critical and literary texts. Individual editions that deviate from any of these standard approaches (such as reconstructions from fragmentary or incomplete sources) contain their own notes on editorial method.
One general rule that's applied throughout all of my editions is that my own editorial insertions are enclosed within brackets — most of my insertions are indicated by being enclosed within square brackets [ insertion ], but in the case of "courtesy" accidentals within musical scores I generally use round brackets ( # ).
(1) Literal Transcription
By "literal transcription", I mean one that doesn't change what's in the original source in any significant sense, but instead re-presents the original content as closely to its original written form as possible (while not slavishly reproducing the original page-layout, fonts, etc.). This is the fundamental editorial ethic behind all of my transcriptions at ScotMus.com, although I sometimes adopt different actual methods in order to satisfy (or even enhance) its general principles, as described in sections (2) and (3) below. A good example of one of my literal transcriptions is my edition of Niel Gow's Collection of Strathspey Reels which, unlike the vast majority of modern Gow editions, faithfully retains the original bass part, any "classical" variation sections given in the original, and all original performance indications such as trills, bowing-marks, dynamics, etc.
Traditionally, literal transcriptions of musical scores have tended to be of more value to folks of a musicological bent than anyone else. However, I ardently believe that contemporary multimedia technologies can be used to not only completely remove this traditional obstacle, but also yield several highly beneficial results that make this editorial method the best for all readerships.
In the traditional world of hard-copy editions, even the most scholarly most modern editors of historical music routinely alter the content from their original sources. There are several good reasons for this. One is that notational conventions continue to change over time, and a lot of performers, for example, can find it hard to make sense of a fair few scores that were published even as recently as the early eighteenth century. In such scores, things that we now take for granted (such as simple repeat signs) are not necessarily presented in the form that we expect. Many non-literal editions therefore alter the original notation to conform to modern conventions.
However, presenting a literal transcription within a multimedia presentation allows for the inclusion of an additional audio realisation of the score which can, very productively, act as a supplementary, fully-edited "transcription" in its own right that interprets its graphic counterpart in real-time to offer guidance on how it might be correctly (or least functionally) read and/or performed. As a result, such "double-versioned" multimedia editions can account for the needs of both musicologists and performers, without having to completely compromise the needs of either. Arguably, everyone gets to have their cake and eat it — while also having a nibble at everyone else's, if they fancy it. So, my preferred method is literal transcription, within a multi-media presentation.
NB.: Obviously, original sources sometimes contain blatant mistakes, such as simple copying or printing errors (such as an ommitted accidental). Most of the time, mistakes are easy enough to work out correct solutions for — often, there is only one correct solution, or if not, the original will contain all the clues required for working one out. Overall, my policy here is to literally transcribe the error in my graphic edition, but then also offer a corrected solution in my audio realisation. In the case of severe problems of interpretation, additional notes are generally provided, with alternative solutions described, where appropriate.
(2) Diplomatic Transcription
Different people mean different things by "diplomatic" transcription. A lot of older publications used the phrase "facsimile transcription" to mean the same thing. Mostly, either of these two terms means that the editor has tried to make a new transcription of a source that recreates absolutely everything on the page exactly as it is in the original — right down to creating unique fonts to reproduce, for example, the original scribal hand of a medieval manuscript. These days, though, we have plenty of technologies to produce graphic reproductions of originals directly, so "facsimile" now generally doesn't mean a new transcription, but something like a photocopy or a digital scan instead (see below).
So what I mean by "diplomatic transcription" in my own editions is an enhanced literal transcription (see above) in which I've also attempted to replicate the layout, style, and general physical look 'n' feel of the original source. Note, however, that I say attempted — there's always a few compromises that can't be avoided! Nonetheless, if you compare my diplomatic transcriptions with their original sources, you'll find them pretty close. One example here would be my transcription of the Graham/Dauney edition of The Skene Manuscript, which closely reproduces the source's page-layouts, but only approximates its font styles. However, I freely admit that there was no profoundly scholarly reason for me to do that album diplomatically (rather than just literally), other than the fact that it was dead easy to do, so I thought I might as well!
Making a diplomatic transcription of a printed source is normally reasonably easy (although often more a point of aesthetics than necessity). In general, it's possible to find modern digital fonts that are at least similar to older type-set fonts. The massive headaches start when you're attempting to make a diplomatic transcription of a manuscript. In fact, the font problem here is almost always impossible to solve — unless you create your own new digital font for each unique manuscript that you transcribe. This, obviously, can soon end up being so time-consuming as to render it pointless. I know, because I'm mad enough to have tried it in the past. So, as a general rule, I don't even try to slavishly-reproduce things like hand-writing styles for manuscripts — compromises become expedient, and even necessary here. However, in diplomatic transcriptions, I always follow the overall page-layout as closely as possible.
Another more complicated issue that sometimes arises with manuscripts is that their authors have used weird personal hieroglyphics that follow no known conventions, and only ever made perfect sense to themselves. Unfortunately, this can apply to all sorts of crucial content, including whole sections on which the overall form absolutely depends. Sometimes this means being forced to temporarily depart from the ideal of diplomatic transcription, but not always. One way or another, completely unique editorial solutions are often required, and so I deal with them on a case-by-case basis, providing notes on my method as required.
(3) Facsimile Techniques
A facsimile edition generally means, of course, a direct mechanical and/or electronic graphic reproduction of an original source — for example, by photographing, photocopying or scanning. A simple example of one of my facsimile editions is Niel Gow's Recovery. However, few facsimile processes absolutely guarantee a clean or even useable end-product — and a lot depends on the physical condition of the original. In fact, a certain amount of editorial intervention can be required. On one level, this can involve the removal (from the facsimile) of spurious things like dirt, scratches, or even background elements that obscure the original's content. Equally, retaining the page's background colour/texture isn't always either desirable or functional (although sometimes, removing it can just be an aesthetic choice). More problematically, some original sources have content that is too faint to read, and so requires some kind of enhancement or even "filling-in" before it can be read at all (which amounts to writing new content onto the facsimile). In extreme cases, missing content has to be supplied by interpretation and actively created by the editor. As such, decent facsimile editions are not always as quick-'n'-easy to produce as you might think. More importantly, they're not always as literal as you might think. So, in cases where major editorial intervention has been necessary, I've supplied explanatory notes.
(4) A Word about Words
Finally, a word or two on spelling and orthography. As a general rule, I do not alter the original spellings of words. Now, bear in mind that practically no European languages had "officially"-standardised, "correct" spelling-systems prior to the early nineteenth century (ie. after the invention of dictionaries). What all of this means is that you'll meet a lot of weird-looking spellings on this website that are absolutely not spelling mistakes at all. Again, my aim is to follow the original sources as faithfully as possible.
However, I do often modernise old-style letter characters. My main reason for doing this is that one person I showed an early version of the website to had never seen the so-called "long S" ( ſ ) that was used almost universally in British texts of all languages prior to the nineeteenth century. The upshot of this was that she got totally bamboozled and just couldn't read half of the words in one of my eighteenth century texts, and kept thinking that the long S in "muſic" was in fact a modern F. And that's a bit of a problem for a website that's entirely about music...! My other reason for modernising old letters is that it just makes transcribing a lot easier and faster because you don't have to keep inserting Unicode characters into your HTML every few seconds — or requiring that your readers download and install specialist fonts before the page is even legible.
So, I use two general rules here —
(a) In the case of older texts whose only non-modern character is the so-called "long S", I modernise all instances of it as a matter of course. This actually applies to practically all my transcriptions of roughly pre-1800 texts, such as those of the Gows, Burns, Thomson, Playford, and so on. In practical terms, that means the majority of texts on this website.
(b) But for most roughly pre-1700 texts where more archaic characters than just the "long S" are used, I prefer to include all of them (although not in the case of tune or album titles), despite the problems this can cause for the reader. This often particularly applies to pre-1700 texts written in Scots, which often use the good old "thorn" and "yogh" characters that were generally dropped from English a lot earlier in history (especially in printed books). There's just something that I don't like about losing these — in my view, modernising "yogh" in particular is just ugly — particularly when it's misleadingly changed to Z rather than Y, as in "Menzies", which non-Scots-speakers now routinely mis-pronounce as a direct result! Nine times of of ten, it's more appropriate to modernise "ezh", rather than "yogh" as Z (incidentally, I was taught to use the old "ezh" form of Z in handwriting at primary school in Midlothian as late as the 1970s, which is probably where my nerdy objections come from).
So, sometimes, to get the full effect, you might have to install a specialist font before some of my older text transcriptions will display properly at all. I humbly apologise in advance for any inconvenience that this might cause you. However, I only ever use freeware fonts that I've tested extensively and found to be 100% reliable on my own computers. These specialist fonts have often been developed by professional textual scholars who I've had a chat with, and whose work I trust — not least the excellent Junicode font by the Medieval literature scholar, Prof. Peter Baker of the University of Virginia (who has very kindly tweaked his font now and then to suit my needs for transcribing manuscripts in Old Welsh, which is an even thicker alphabetic soup than Medieval Scots!).
Nonetheless, if your computer explodes as a result of installing a font I recommend, it's not my legal problem — but it's probably not even the font-author's problem, either. Bottom line is that what you install on your own computer is your own free choice — and ultimately, your own problem. Especially when you didn't even pay anyone for it. Having said that, I'm happy to try and help if I can.
LEGAL DISCLAIMER
You can't sue a musicologist for not living up to his professed ideals, so forget that one right now. ;-)