Writing on the Music

Is it okay to write on your music?

  There's a lot of controversy out whether professional musicians should be writing notes or fingerings on their sheet music. Some think that it's childish and shows lesser skill, while others don't even give it a second thought.
  Personally I write a ton on the music I'm preparing. This can range from fingerings, whether I need to think higher or lower to hit a certain note, or which direction a certain pitch needs to lean for intonation. I believe that an audience member will never walk over to look at your stand in the middle of a concert, so we don't have to worry about them seeing it and judging us. On the other hand, if you see someone in rehearsal that's writing on their music but isn't making mistakes and sounds great, do those notes really take away from that?

  Now I want to make sure that everyone knows that you should almost never write on the original copies of any music. These are the clean copies that you, or the orchestra, will use for as long as possible, and are quite expensive to replace. This is why I make copies of all my solos and orchestral literature that I actually use to practice. And other people down the road might not appreciate your notes as much as you do, especially if they're in charge of erasing all of them. On that note, make sure you always make these corrections in pencil, this way if something does change you can easily, and cleanly, change it.
  Besides the immediate benefits that writing on the music gives you, there is another huge bonus. Let's say you played Mahler's 1st way back in the day, like 20 or 30 years ago, then one day an orchestra asks you come in and sub on that piece in one week. Preparing that piece can be daunting, but if you saved your copy that you used on it last time it'll go much faster because your notes will remind you where your problem areas were and how you went about solving them. This will really streamline the process and you'll end up being much more confident in the performance.
  If you don't take my word on this, or don't know much writing is going "overboard" here's a picture of one of my pages from Gliere's horn concerto...