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OP
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In 'versed, well-versed!', WordWind noted the following:
On a tangent, but related, I heard a very well-educated and accomplished conductor scold a youth orchestra musician for referring to a staff as a line. The youth had asked about a measure on, say, "The third line." The conductor scolded, "Lines appear on the staff. What you meant to ask me about was the measure on the third staff."
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In the choir I sing with the lines of music on the page are always referred to as a 'system' - has anyone else heard this usage?
My understanding would be that a 'staff' is to notes like the page is to words and is used for providing a notation method. Inevitably it has to be broken up to fit onto a page with each split section becoming a system in the way that words split into lines.
Have any of the other musicians got alternative terms for this? Is there an atlantic divide? Is it unique to my choir?
What do you reckon?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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System! That's the term. I was trying to remember it when this question came up in the other thread. Our director and the musical ringers we have in the community chorus AnnaS are in use that term. But then it generally refers to more than one staff, since we have SATB scores. Maybe two or three systems per page with four or more staffs per system.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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When I sang in a choir, many years ago admittedly, we spoke of stave and staves rather than staff and staffs. Don't know if this is common in the UK.
My efforts were more energetic than tuneful as, although I enjoy listening to music, when it comes to producing musical sounds, by whatever means, I am basically tone deaf! The grammar school that I attended had the conductor of the National Youth Orchestra as music teacher and the whole school took over a local church twice a year to deliver Handel's Passion and Messiah.
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old hand
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old hand
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stave and staves rather than staff and staffs.And here I thought it was staff (s) and staves (pl). Atomica says staff = stave, and plural of staff can be staffs or staves. So we're all right, then. Live and learn! 
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I consistently hear staff and staves in Virginia.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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veteran
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veteran
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Our choir director uses the word 'score' in this context -- a group of staves, like 4 staves for SATB, or 6 for SSAATB, etc. He will say something like, "Go back to page 7 middle score third measure," meaning the third measure of the middle (second of 3) group of staves on p. 7.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Yep, you beat me to it, Boby. Most of my directors also used "score" in this manner.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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"score" in this manner
what connection with other lines...? [wonk]
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Scores on a page, as you use the term above, are different from staves. Scores are groups of staves with parts performing within each score (so-used above) at the same time. Staves on the overall score for, say, a clarinetist are the separate staves performed one after the other.
What would be really helpful here would be a visual representation of the various ways in which a score can appear on a page. For example, a conductor's score, an individual musician's score, and a choral score that has a couple of scores (used here differently from the overall score) of several parts. These three types of scores, for instance, all look different from each other. Language sometimes fails where a visual representation would not. It reminds me of James Joyce's attempt to represent a fugue in Ulysses. Impossible, really. You can't show in words how a fugue really sounds--verbal fugue or not-- but Joyce was driven enough to try to do it--but you had to buy into his language. Word has it that he never again listened to Bach after studying the fugue master for the chapter in Ulysses--said something like Bach now bored him.
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