on 11/10/03 1:05 PM, Colin Broom wrote: > Okay, I'm sure this has come up before, but I'm just wondering what folks' > feelings are on the usage of cautionary accidentals in non-tonal music. > > I know that one approach is to display the accidental again if the note is > repeated following other pitches in the same bar, e.g. > > | F# D# Fn B D# | > > but would you do this even if it was just D# B D#? > > > Do many people still advocate the traditional approach to accidental and > cautionary use?(e.g., it applies till the end of the bar, and so in the > above cases, no cautionary would be necessary at all) > > Part of me thinks it can be very easy to go overboard with cautionary > marking, which then leads to problem if misses the marking on one. > > Thoughts on what is almost certainly a well-trodden topic are appreciated.
Kurt Stone, in "Music Notation in the Twentieth Century," on page 56, describes this style of accidentals and gives five basic rules to illustrate its employment. The gist of it is that accidentals affect only those notes that they immediately precede; however, accidentals are not repeated on ties or immediate repetitions. According to Stone, if there is even one pitch in between two instances of a D#, the accidental should be repeated on both. Additional rules require that a natural form that immediately follows an altered form must include the natural (Ab-An), accidentals are repeated on tied notes if the tie goes from line to line or page to page, and parenthetical accidentals may be used for clarification if absolutely necessary. I am a big fan of Stone's book, and if he disagrees with any other text I often choose his way. Also... I don't have it in front of me, but I seem to recall that the edition I have of Schoenberg's Piano Suite Op. 25 follows this system almost to the letter, never resorts to parenthetical accidentals, and is never unclear. ------------- Brad Beyenhof [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
