The Yeomen of the Guard
 

ERRATA LIST FOR YEOMEN OF THE GUARD

(Schirmer Piano/Vocal Score)

Key to measure indications:
     A/B/C = Page/System/Measure

Many of the errata in this list (including all of the dialogue entries) were originally pointed out to me by Neil Midkiff. I have marked those errata with the initials N.M. All other entries are my own unless otherwise indicated.

This errata can also be downloaded as a Word file.

Steven Lichtenstein, editor

VOCAL ERRATA

25/2/1:  Altos should be an E, not G, on "ward" (Andrew Taines)

98/3/1: Chorus basses, last note should be Bb, not D. (N.M.)

122/2/1: Chorus women, second note, the sharp sign should be on the alto note, not the soprano note (G# instead of B#). (N.M.)

125/4/1: Where 2nd Yeoman part is shown on "we hunted low... we hunted there" the full score has 2nd and 3rd Yeomen on D and F (an octave below Fairfax and 1st Yeoman). Repeat this at the top of page 128. (N.M.)

130/4/1: In the full score, the melody of Wilfred's line "My lord, I did not set him free" echoes the Lieutenant's preceding line, ending with the notes E-D instead of F#-G.

135/2/2: The altos' first note should be B, not D (the same note sung by Phœbe and Carruthers).

143/1/1: Dame Carruthers' "ye" should be a quarter note, not an eighth. (N.M.)

145/1/1: I can't prove this, but I suspect the second basses should sing an F on "keep." There seems no feasible reason that Sullivan would have omitted the third of that final chord. However, if it is an erratum, it dates from very early in the opera's history. All versions of the score have the second basses joining the first basses on the A-flat.

145/3/2: Tenor and baritone notes on "house" should be an eighth, not a sixteenth. (N.M.)

146/2/3: Tenor "ward" should be a quarter plus an eighth rest, not a dotted quarter (the dotted quarter is also found in Chappell; the full score has a quarter, which is more consistent with the rest of the phrase).

154/2/2: Wilfred's second note should be F#, not E. (N.M.)

178/1/1: Bass line should be marked "piano" along with tenors at "It..." (N.M.)

179/1/1: "Once" is a misprint for "ounce." (N.M.)

218/2/1: Alto line should have a treble clef rather than the bass clef shown. (N.M.)

224/1/2: Phœbe/Carruthers text, change "and claim me" to "appears to."

234/2/2: Elsie's verse should be "It's the song of a merrymaid, nestling near, Who loved her lord, but who dropped a tear At the moan of the merryman..." [Schirmer follows the original text rather than the generally accepted text (given here) of the 1897 revival] (N.M.)

238/1/2: Basses, first note should be F# not D. (N.M.)

DIALOGUE ERRATA (N.M.)

89, first line of dialogue: "'Tis an odd freak, for a young man..." should read "a dying man."

89, halfway down: "all the difference between stony silence..." should be "stony reticence."

89, fifth line from bottom: "the night, thou and I alone together..." should be "thou and I are alone together."

95, end of Wilfred's first speech: "one who needs must woo..." should be "one who must needs woo."

95, Meryll's first speech: "is but a lute..." should read "is but as a lute."

149, Wilfred's next-to-last line: "Suite" is a misprint for "suit."

206, Meryll's last long speech: The quotation should end after "and - and -" - not after "and that's me!"

PIANO ERRATA

12/4/3: The bass note on the first beat should be Ab, not C.

21/3/4: The quarter-note pick-up to "This the evening of our day" does not actually exist; it should be an empty beat.

23/2/6: There should not be a bottom Eb in the left hand, only the third-space Eb.

29/2/2: Last beat, left hand should be an octave lower.

33/2/1: Right hand is missing the second-line G on the first beat. Also, the G an octave lower should be repeated as a quarter-note on the fourth beat.

35/1/1-2 (not counting the pickup bar): On the last beat of the first full bar and the first beat of the 2nd full bar, the bass line goes down a fifth from C to low F, not up a fourth.

44/3/3: First chord; the Eb in the right hand should be a Db. The same applies in the second verse at the corresponding spot (46/3/2).

46/3/4: The second chord should be an eighth-note, not a quarter-note.

79/3/2: The A's on the fourth beat should be an octave higher, contrary to the downward motion of the vocal part on Point's final "peer."

86/2/3: The right-hand figure is incorrectly written. It should be as follows:

97/2/2: The last chord in the left hand should actually be an A-diminished chord over the Bb pedal (A-natural and C-natural are missing from the reduction).

98/2/3: The chords which punctuate the text "If so, we come to meet him, that we may fitly greet him" are played by pizzicato strings alone, as opposed to the tutti in the previous bars. Although there is no specific dynamic marking in the Kalmus full score, the accompanist should reflect this change in orchestration by playing the pizzicato chords much more softly than the first two chords on the page.

113/1/1: The oboe solo (i.e. the ascending eighth-notes) is marked with accents in the full score. The staccato marks in the Schirmer are misleading; the notes should probably not be played detached.

118/3/4: There's a missing note in the first right hand chord - there should be a whole-note D over the whole-note Bb. Interestingly, when this measure is repeated at 119/4/1, it is the Bb which is missing.

120/2/1: Whereas in 119/1/3 the bass note on beat 3 changed from C-natural to C-flat, in this bar it should not do so. Remove the flat sign from the C half note, so that the chord remains as a pure F7 in second inversion throughout the entire measure.

130/1/3: The C# in the grace-note pickup to the first beat should be C-natural (rendering unnecessary the courtesy natural preceding the fourth beat).

145/1/1: Throughout this measure and on the downbeat of 145/1/2, the bass note in the left hand should be doubled an octave lower, as it is in the remainder of 145/1/2.

150/2/2: There should be a first-space Ab in the bass of both Bb-Major chords in the bass clef. The identical music appears on 153/2/3, and should be amended in the same way.

150/2/5 (also 153/1/2 and 153/2/6): the Eb-Major chord on the downbeat is badly written. Although it fits nicely into the hand position, it is acoustically unsound because of the wide spacing between the left and right hands. The Bb in the right-hand chord stands out awkwardly in the chordal texture, and not only sounds wrong... it is wrong! There is no instrument in the orchestra which plays that note, although the first horn does play the Bb an octave lower. The best solution would be to replace the Bb with an Eb a fifth lower (admittedly somewhat awkward from a pianistic point of view), or simply to omit the Bb altogether, and play only the high Eb.

151/1/2 et al: On this page, four contrabass notes may be easily and effectively inserted in the left hand (as an 8va-basso doubling): Bb on the fourth beat of the second bar, Eb on the first beat of the third bar, C on the fourth beat of the sixth bar and Bb on the first beat of the seventh bar.

154/2/1: The dynamic mark of "piano" should appear on the second beat of this bar, rather than on the second beat of 154/2/2.

166/2/4: The sustained G octaves in the piano bass clef are incorrectly notated as whole notes. They should actually have a half-note value like the rest of the chord, thus cutting off before the line "Though the altar be a tomb" begins.

169/4/2, piano part: Starting from this bar, the right hand pattern is incorrect. Within each triplet, the second and third note-groups should be reversed, so that in the first two beats the top line goes D-D-F, and the bottom line (descending) goes Bb-Bb-F. This pattern actually continues through the end of the second system of page 171.

185/1/1: The bass line does not in fact jump up an octave on the second beat, as notated. All eight quarter notes in the first two bars of the page should be played on the same low octave Ds.

187/2/1 (and 190/3/3): Elsie's pickup notes ("If he's") should probably be eighth-notes rather than 16ths. Chappell give eighths at the repeat sign and 16ths at the beginning (where the notes are shown purely as a visual courtesy). The full score discourteously omits the notes at the beginning, and shows only eighth-notes at the repeat sign.

204/2/4: There should be no downbeat on the second beat in the left hand. The rhythm of the cellos and basses in that measure is as follows: Eighth-note, two eighth-rests, eighth-note.

222/2/1: The rhythm is incorrect in the right hand. In place of the eighth-note on each of the downbeats of the first two measures, there should be two sixteenth-notes.

235/1/3: The quarter-rests at the end of this bar are incorrect. The quarter-note accompaniment should continue as usual in both hands through the notated rests.

235/3/4: This bar should be played identically to 235/1/3, as corrected above. It's important to keep the quarter notes flowing into the next section. To make this simpler, I recommend leaving out the melody in the right hand throughout the second and third systems (where it is covered by the chorus in any case), and keep the accompaniment pattern the same as it was throughout page 234.

238/1/2: The 8va in the piano part is incorrect. The second quarter-note (A) is in fact played in the higher octave as indicated, but from the C# onwards the notes should be played at pitch, the C# dropping down a sixth from the top A. The first two bars of the second system should likewise be played down an octave in the right hand, subsequently jumping up to the final D of the phrase, which is correctly placed as written.


Page updated 27 August, 2011