We have chosen to include a handwritten score in the background of certain STRADIVARIUS Editions communication elements, its calligraphic staves developing, as it were, the logo.
It is taken from Le Petit Prince for clarinet and strings (1996) by Jean FRANÇAIX, written in memory of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and dedicated to the clarinettist Frédéric Cellier.
If the manuscript is the first, moving and sensitive trace of a work, printing - since the Renaissance and the successive improvements of Johannes GUTENBERG (c.1400-1468) and, for the music, of Ottaviano PETRUCCI (1466-1539) - has made it possible to extend it.
By making it easily legible, removing erasures, dispelling doubts and establishing its development and form, the edition has not only affirmed this miracle but also preserved it by ensuring its multiplication and distribution.
The layout has been completely redesigned to combine intelligibility, functionality, readability and eco-responsibility.
Rethink
- The traditional musical layout has always been dictated solely by the publisher's need to save paper. But using a maximum number of bars per staff and staves per page literally deconstructs the composition, masking its form, logical structure and phrasing. This seriously hampers comprehension, as a recapitulation, for example, is only dimly perceived.
Intelligibility
- We know that in the vast majority of cases, whatever the style, music is organised in 4-bar phrases, with each part made up of 16 (4x4) or 32 bars.
- Respecting this compositional structure and making it visible in the page layout makes the music even more intelligible, an intelligibility that is further enhanced by the markers, the framed letters that are systematically placed at the section joints.
Functionality
- Positioned in the most immediately recognisable places, the repetitions are also more functional, as they are usually within the same page.
- This layout combines clarity and efficiency, limiting page turns - which can also be facilitated by a common hands-free page-turning system.
Readability
- In order to optimise readability on tablets with a format slightly smaller than standard A4, the score and texts are slightly larger than in most traditional editions.
- Since A4 is a narrow format, we have chosen to significantly reduce the side margins in order to correct this width problem. And this is all the more appropriate given that all the tablets already have a frame that acts as a margin.
Eco-responsibility
- If you choose to print your downloaded files, you should know that the musical Petrucci script and Theano Didot text fonts offer the advantage of combining classic graphic elegance with economy/ecology. In fact, the fineness of their strokes and serifs means substantial savings in ink, making them more durable and practical (less handling).
