ARNOLD ARNSTEIN -'Dean of American Copyists'

[motet]

For John Ruggero, in case you haven't seen it.

https://www.nytimes.com/1978/06/04/arch ... -view.html

[John Ruggero]

Thanks, Motet. Yes, someone alerted me to it awhile ago. The Times must have scanned it from the original and run OCR on it without checking and correcting the resulting errors. Several years ago, I asked for permission to quote from it at Notat.io, and they told me that it would cost me close to 1000.00 for few paragraphs. I am glad that they are finally opening up their archives in a reasonable way.

[AnneMillington]

This is a wonderful read!

[John Ruggero]

Glad you like that Anne. He was quite a character and taught me a lot. There is also an article on him called "Copy Cat" in the music section of Time magazine. And another section from a long article in The NY Times Magazine concerning the premiere of Barber's Anthony and Cleopatra. Maybe they are also available now.

He had a lot of interesting stories to tell and should have written a memoir. I was his assistant when he went to D. C. and roomed across from Bernstein at the Watergate for the premiere of Bernstein's Mass. In the wee hours, Bernstein would pass the pages of score under his door one by one for Arnstein to copy the parts for the sections that he still hadn't orchestrated. This was a few days before the first performance, which was also typical of Menotti.

[N Grossingink]

John, was Mr. Arnstein still active when computer based software came on the scene? I guess that would have been around 1990 for the more advanced software. I wonder what he would have thought about the ability to fix those missing 16 bars in minutes rather than spending hours recopying several pages of score.

[John Ruggero]

That's something that has intrigued me as well. He was active until his death in 1989 at the age of 91 and still teaching at Juilliard and copying, but I wasn't with him in his later years and don't know if he was keeping up with developments in computer engraving. But knowing him, he probably would have bought a computer, learned Finale, and kept going into his 90s.

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/05/obit ... -dies.html

[RMK]

I worked with Arnie until he closed up shop.

Don't remember ever seeing a computer in the office.

[AnneMillington]

I took some classes in autography at San Francisco Conservatory in the late 80s, shortly before the first computer notation program I ever saw came out (Encore). The class was all about music calligraphy: shapes of notes, widths of stems and lines, curves, and dots and lengths and placement. It was very exacting, and we used only pens and nibs, thick black ink, straight edges, razors for erasing; we made our own staff paper, and logged hours upon hours of practice.

At one point a former student came in to our class to show the instructor something he had just discovered: computerized music notation, suitable for engraving. He was pretty excited. The instructor less so. He thought it useless and fake. I was in his camp, because of the beauty of what we were creating by hand. But nowadays? I cannot imagine.

[N Grossingink]

…we made our own staff paper…

Ah yes - the good old Ames Lettering Guide-
https://flaxart.com/content/AmesLetteri ... ctions.pdf