Bernard Hill writes:
| In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, I. Oppenheim writes
| >On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, John Chambers wrote:
| >> For that matter, I've often wished that abc officially
| >> supported a bare : in the middle of a staff. In some other
| >> kinds of music, this is used inside long measures, as a
| >> sort of weak, "editorial" bar line
| >
| >This is a completely different matter.
| >
| >You're talking about having dotted bars and dotted
| >slurs for editorial purposes. Both are indeed quite
| >useful.
|
| I'm not sure - is he? What about split bars, ie ones where the first
| part is on stave 1 and the second half on stave 2. Stave 1 has no end
| barline.
No, Irwin was right. Split bars should just be drawn without a bar
line at the end of the staff. But consider for example the opening
bars of this well-known work of Bach:
X: 1
T: Sonata in G for two flutes and continuo
T: BWV 1039
C: J.S.Bach (1685-1750)
N: Also published as a sonata for viola da gambo and cembalo.
N: Voice 2 is the gamba part.
Q: "Adagio"
M: 12/8
L: 1/16
K: G
V: 1
[| d24- | d12- d2 c6 B4- |
| B2A4- A2d2F2 G6- GBA^cdA | FBAGFE F2D2EF/G/ F2AGFE FDA2B^c/d/ |
| ^c2dcBA d2A2AB/=c/ B2cBAG A2d2FG/A/ | G2AGFE FEDEFG AGBAGF E4e2- |
V: 2
[| B2dcBA B2G2AB/c/ {c}B2dcBA BGd2ef/g/ | f2gfed g2d2de/=f/ {f}e2fedc d2a2Bc/d/ |
| {d}c2dcBA BAGABc dcedcB AGFED2 | a24- |
| a12- a2 g6 f4- | f2e4- e2a2T^c2 d6- dcedcB |
The long bars were common then, and this makes for some difficult
counting at times. When you realize how much syncopation there is in
this music, you can see that it's very easy to get lost in the middle
of a measure. What some editors will do with music like this, to
preserve the original measures but make counting easier, is to use
broken bar lines (here a ':') like this:
[| d12- : d12- | d12- : d2 c6 B4- |
| B2A4- A2d2F2 : G6- GBA^cdA | FBAGFE F2D2EF/G/ : F2AGFE FDA2B^c/d/ |
| ^c2dcBA d2A2AB/=c/ : B2cBAG A2d2FG/A/ | G2AGFE FEDEFG : AGBAGF E4e2- |
V: 2
[| B2dcBA B2G2AB/c/ : {c}B2dcBA BGd2ef/g/ | f2gfed g2d2de/=f/ : {f}e2fedc d2a2Bc/d/ |
| {d}c2dcBA BAGABc : dcedcB AGFED2 | a12- : a12 - |
| a12- : a2 g6 f4- | f2e4- e2a2T^c2 : d6- dcedcB |
I hope I counted right. ;-)
This is a small change, but it can add a lot to the readability of
such music. One could, of course, just use regular bar lines, and
some editors will do that. But that's being less true to the original
composer's notation. Experienced Baroque musicians usually like
"urtext" editions better than modernized editions, so they can see
what musicians of the time saw without being misled by an editor's
additions. Those grace notes - apoggiaturas actually - may or may not
have been in the original, but they're in both of the editions that I
have, so I've kept them.
Broken bar lines are sometimes shown as four dots or vertical dashes
in the staff's spaces. They are more often shown as a string of
vertical dashes, a bar line with a gap in each staff space. You can't
draw that too well in ascii, though.
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