Critical Apparatus & Editorial Markup

Previously, mei-friend’s functionalities targeting MEI’s critical apparatus and editorial markup were limited to insertion and display of <supplied> elements.

As of mei-friend v1.2.0, further functions have been added to the editorial markup. Now it is possible to insert and display <supplied>, <choice>, <unclear>, <sic>, <corr>, <orig>, <reg>, <add>, <del> elements, as described below.

We plan to support working with <app> in future development.

Editorial Markup

The editorial markup records changes made to a musical text during its creation and editing. It documents alterations by the composer, copyists, or editors, ensuring transparency and clarity in the editorial process.

Fig. 1: The markup tool.

Markup tools

The markup tools may be accessed by clicking the corresponding ‘highlighter’ icon in the panel icons area at the top-right of the interface (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: The 'enrichment panel' icon.

The enrichment panel has four tabs:

• Enrichment List, to obtain a quick overview of the annotations and editorial markups currently present within your encoding
• Markup tools, to create editorial observations in and interventions to the text
• Annotation tools, to generate annotations
• Login to Solid

Markup settings

Select markup responsibility

In the markup settings, the person responsible for the editorial changes can be selected (Fig. 2).

But in order to have options to choose from the drop down menu of the markup responsibility setting, there must be a responsibility statement (<respStmt>) in the MEI-Header (<meiHead>) of your code. It is important that each <persName> entry has an xml:id attribute (Fig. 3).

Fig. 2: Markup settings

Fig. 3: Responsibility statement

Default selection for markup

Elements can be selected for markup according to different modes, determined using the ‘Default selection for markup’ drop-down menu:

Using Selected elements, MEI elements may be selected using either the editor panel or the notation panel.

Using Accidentals, only the accidentals of the note(s) within the selection will be marked up. This function is especially useful if the accidental is embedded as an attribute of the note; in this case, it will be automatically changed it into an element within the note, to make it accessible to markup:

Before editing:

<note accid="n" dur="16" oct="4" pname="g" stem.dir="up" />

After using the accidental selection:

<note dur="16" oct="4" pname="g" stem.dir="up">
	<sic>
		<accid accid="n"/>
	</sic>
</note>

Using Articulation, only the accidentals of a note, a chord or multiple notes/chords will be selected. As in the case of accidentals above, this function is particularly useful if the articulation is embedded as an attribute of the note; it will be turned into an element within the note to make it accessible to markup. For example:

Before editing:

<note artic="stacc" dur="8" oct="5" pname="b" stem.dir="down" />

After using the articulation selection:

<note dur="8" oct="5" pname="b" stem.dir="down">
	<sic>
		<artic artic="stacc"/>
	</sic>
</note>

Add alternative encodings

The <choice> element groups a series of alternative encodings for the same place in a text.

You can either indicate and correct apparent errors (<sic> <corr>) as seen in the following example:

<choice>
	<sic>
		<note dur="2" oct="4" pname="g"></note>
	</sic>     
	<corr>
		<note dur="4" oct="4" pname="g"></note>
	</corr>
</choice>

or indicate regularization of variant, irregular and non-standard forms (<orig> <reg>):

<choice>
   <orig>
      <clef line="2" shape="C"></clef>
   </orig>
   <reg>
      <clef line="2" shape="G"></clef>
   </reg>
</choice>

Interventions in the text

The <subst> element groups transcriptional elements when their combination is to be regarded as a single intervention in the text. The most common combination is a replacement of portions of the musical text using both the <del> and <add> element:

<subst>
    <del>
    	<note dur="4" oct="4" pname="c"></note>
    </del>
    <add>
    	<beam>
            <note dur="8" oct="4" pname="c"></note>
            <note dur="8" oct="4" pname="d"></note>
    	</beam>
    </add>
</subst>

Add editorial interventions

<supplied>: Contains material supplied by the transcriber or editor for any reason.

<unclear>: Contains material that cannot be transcribed with certainty because it is illegible or inaudible in the source.

<sic>: Contains apparently incorrect or inaccurate material.

<corr>: Contains the correct form of an apparent erroneous passage.

<orig>: Contains material that is marked as following the original rather than being normalized or corrected.

<reg>: Contains material that has been regularized or normalized in some sense.

Add descriptive markup

<add>: Marks an addition to the text.

<del>: Contains information deleted, marked as deleted, or otherwise indicated as superfluous or spurious in the copy text by an author, scribe, annotator, or corrector.