Quote:
Originally Posted by jujimufu
But for example, Birtwistle's scores are all in English, Lachenmann's are all in German, Messiaen's are all in French etc.
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Just for the sake of it I had to check! I don't have any Birtwistle scores, but I had a quick look with Messiaen and Lachenmann. With Messiaen, the first thing I noticed in "Les oiseaux de Karuizawa" out of the "sept Haikai" was the mixing of Italian and French tempo-related terms, such as "rall. sempre - - - - - - - Presque lent". A bit earlier he uses "ralentir". For Lachenmann, I checked the Toccatina for violin solo, where he combines terms such as "distinto" and "fluido" with "Saiten hinter dem Steg", or "2 Oktaven höher".
And by looking through some other scores of other composers, I see -lots- of mixing up between languages. Berlioz can't make up his mind between Italian and French, dito Boulez and Lutoslawski, Bruckner can't decide between Italian and German, dito Schönberg, Mahler, and Stockhausen, and Ligeti switches between Italian terms and explanations which he gives both in English and German, and so on. EDIT: And just now I checked Brahms, Beethoven, Gluck, and Bartòk and found nice examples of mixed up languages too!
And yes, I'm certainly being picky
But my point is that it's not that easy to decide what is a "technical standard" term and what isn't. Where draw the line? Sul pont.? frullato? marcato? espressivo? cantabile? And what's the line between tempo and "mood" indications? Is "Adagio" a technical term for a tempo, or rather a certain "character" of music, or even a possible reference to the form of a piece?
My point is only that it's hard to make a general statement that will provide the best result in all cases. And I certainly agree that consistency is important if you want your scores to be easily understood. Consistency doesn't have to mean restricting yourself to one language for -everything- though.