On 29 Jun 2005 at 20:56, Darcy James Argue wrote: > On 29 Jun 2005, at 8:39 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > Well, it depends on CONTEXT, which I've said all along. > > No, you did not. > > What you originally wrote was: > > > 6/4 has always been a 2-beat measure, just like 6/8. > > > > If that were not the case, there'd be no reason for either meter to > > exist at all, as 6/8 divided into 3 beats is just 3/4, and 6/4 > > divided likewise, just 3/2. > > > > Why would anyone use a 6 for 3 beats?
Well, that last line makes it clear that I'm discussing 3, as 6/Q doesn't exist in traditional music, and it hadn't yet occurred to me. > And then: > > > Ignorance of convention? > > > > Failure to understand the way modern time signatures work? > > > > You seem to think there's nothing inherently illogical about using > > 6/4 for a 3 subdivision. I think it goes against the whole > > organization of the way time signatures work, using something that > > clearly means one thing (2 beats) to mean something else for which > > there's another, simpler symbol (3/2). > > > > To me, it smells of borderline incompetence, a lack of comprehension > > of the way the notational system actually works. > > There is no mention of musical context, only absolute pronouncements. You skipped a post: BEGIN REPOST: ====================================================================== On 29 Jun 2005 at 10:16, John Howell wrote: > At 12:43 PM +0100 6/29/05, Owain Sutton wrote: > >Johannes Gebauer wrote: > >>keith helgesen schrieb: > >> > >>>I would query your assertion that 6/4 "traditionally" is 2 X > >>>3/4. > >>> > >>>>From my experience 6/4 is generally 3 X 2/4. > >> > >>Is it? I doubt that for most music written before 1900, after > >>that I guess things are a little more complex. > >> > >>I'd be interested to know about any piece in 6/4 before 1850 > >>which is clearly 3x2/4, do you know one? > > > >What's the earliest we can go back to? ;) > > There are mensural pieces, perhaps as early as the 13th century but > certainly by the 14th, for which the original notation and the > relations between tempus and prolatio have to be resolved when > transcribing into modern notation. By the 14th century it was quite > possible to indicate either interpretation. And there are dance breaks > in Act I of Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" which go like the wind when the > exact interpretation of both mensuration signs and proportion signs is > observed. Well, from the 150 years on either side of 1600, 3/2 was a meter that, as a convention, constantly slipped back and forth between 3 beats and 2 beats (the "I want to live in America" effect). And it's also something that doesn't not happen together in all the parts at the same time (some parts might be in 3, others in 2), but that's an obvious thing in a time when the musical style was basically polymetric, with independent parts each having their own metrical context whose strong beats did not necessarily line up with the other parts. The 3/2 vs. 6/4 thing was characteristic of dance music, but also part of the fundamental musical style, as seen in the prevalence of the cadential hemiola (which outlasted the conventional "I want to live in America" affect well into the late Baroque). Of course, the music wasn't originally notated with either 3/2 or 6/4 as time signature -- those are transcriptions into modern time signatures. Some of the polyphonic fantasies in the viol repertory can tie you up into knots finding a modern meter that makes the music come out looking sensibly. Last Spring my consort played a 4-part Byrd fantasy from an edition that started in 3/2, had a few passages in 6/4, and at the end even went into 5/2 for a while (all on one line): http://www.dfenton.com/Collegium/HomeChurchTheatre/08 Byrd - Fantasy à4.mp3 (last year we replaced two members of the consort with new, inexperienced players, so we barely got through that performance!) It was a mistake, in my opinion, because it never comes out right in all the parts, since the points of imitation, each of which has its own metrical implications, can come in on any beat or half beat of any meter you choose. I think in these contexts, meters should be chosen so that the metrical framework of the cadential passages of each section come out right. The use of 5/2 didn't actually help that very much, but it was a better edition in other respects in comparison to the two alternatives. All that said, I don't even know of any modern music (post-1850) that treats 6/4 as 3 beats -- to me that is nonsensical overcomplication where 3/2 would be the choice that is simpler (well, d'oh, it has a THREE in the time signature). ====================================================================== END REPOST That post is almost all about context, or so it seems to me. And my post after the second one you quoted above: BEGIN REPOST: ====================================================================== On 29 Jun 2005 at 13:20, Aaron Sherber wrote: > At 12:58 PM 06/29/2005, David W. Fenton wrote: > >Why would anyone use a 6 for 3 beats? > > Because if you have a section in quarter notes that's going back > and forth between 4, 5, and 6 beats to the bar (for example), > intermixing 4/4, 5/4, and then 3/2 can look confusing to the > player. 6/4 makes it clear that the beat is still the quarter note. OK, fine, but that's not 3 beats per measure. I was responding to Darcy's remarks that he wasn't familiar with 6/4 used as anything but 3 beats per measure. > I'm looking at a Hindemith score that uses 6/4 in exactly this way. > > I'm not saying I'd necessarily make the same choice, but I do > understand the rationale. If it's not one recurrent metrical structure throughout, it's not really in 3/2. That is, in a context where you're switching subdivision and accent patterns, it's fairly arbitrary which one you choose. But I was speaking to those sitautions where there *is* a pretty clear underlying 3 to the meter, but where 6/4 is used for that -- that's a practice that makes little sense to me at all. ====================================================================== END REPOST Now, you have my first four posts in the thread, of which you selected the 1st and 3rd. Two posts later, I wrote this to Dennis: BEGIN REPOST: ====================================================================== On 29 Jun 2005 at 13:28, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: > At 12:58 PM 6/29/05 -0400, David W. Fenton wrote: > >Why would anyone use a 6 for 3 beats? > > All of this discussion presumes that the barlines are not visual > placeholders. . . Yes. I was going from Darcy's remark of 6/4 as meaning 3 beats, which I find incomprehensible. But I do understand that 6/4 is sometimes used as a "least common denominator" meter for music that shifts around. But it seems to me that it's used in contrast to 3/2 specifically to avoid the implication of an underlying triple pulse. > . . . The evolution of music in the past half-century has > included substantial visual barring, where notes are grouped for > their ease of reading and the barlines and time signatures are > peripheral to the metrical progress, even if they may remain > helpful to the sense of the note lengths. > > In the case of 6/4, the visual placeholder may fall for one, a few, > several, many or all 'measures' where the note arrangement is > dominated by clusters of six quarter notes, even if the same 6/4 > measures also contain, say, three half notes, 4 dotted quarters, > numerous tuplets, and eighth-quarter-dottedhalf-quarter-eighth > symmetries, with no duple or triple beating implicit. Analysis or a > score notation is needed due to the absence of a reasonable > fallback solution that doesn't carry beat implications. > > But sometimes saying the barlines are merely visual doesn't help much > at performance time. I have an example. A quintet I wrote about a > decade ago contained no barlines because the lines were long and > irregular phrases without traditional rhythmic verticalities. The > performers found it difficult to rehearse, and asked if I could add > regular barlines to help them find their way. I was reluctant, but > ultimately created a barred score (dashed barlines) so they could > rehearse more easily. The result was music played with syncopations > where there were none -- because now that the musicians had barlines, > they acted as if those barlines had rhythmic meaning. Grim. The problems are exactly the same in Renaissance music. That was why Mensurestrich was invented, but, like your dashed bar lines, it is only partially successful. > Performers of early music transcriptions fall into syncopations where > the melodic line doesn't shoehorn into post facto divisions, but I > leave that argument to the experts. Suffice it to say that there are > some bizarre performances of "Ma Bouche Rit"... :) In my viol consort, we are constantly struggling to free the meter of the individual lines from the metrical notation of the editions we are playing from. Players experienced in this style of music can get very good at it, so that the non-aligning downbeats don't sound like syncopations but like displaced downbeats. Unfortunately, in my experience, the professional early music crowd when performing this music either does the syncopation thing, as you describe, or plays the thing with so little life that you hear neither displaced downbeats nor syncopations. The group I play in strives for something much more lively and interesting, while not doing the syncopated thing. We don't always succeed, because we just don't have full mastery of our instruments. I had thought that this (all on one line): http://www.dfenton.com/Collegium/ThisMerryPleasantSpring/06-Bevin Browning - The leaves be green.mp3 was a case of us getting it right, but it seems that the displaced downbeats end up sounding like syncopations to me (two passages, one at c. 1:33, with displaced 3s in quarters in 2 parts against a regular 3 in half notes the other part, and the other at c. 2:15, with displaced 3s in half notes). It didn't *feel* that way playing it, but that's certainly what it sounds like listening to it. Another later performance that is actually musically superior, but technically not as strong (and a very bad source recording): http://www.dfenton.com/Collegium/Musick-Musik/02-Bevin Browning -The leaves be green.mp3 shows that we had gotten better in making music out of the piece (which is, I think, more interesting to play than to listen to), but had lost our technical security in the harder parts (especially the displaced 3/4 section). So, many times, what one feels internally doesn't come out right. I do agree that rhythmic notation often works against the flow of what is intended. That's why in early music we learn to play from original notation, which in many cases did *not* have bar lines. But then it becomes very difficult to prepare the music, as it's a lot more work to coordinate the parts. But in my experience, it is worth it, especially to get around the tie-across-barlines problem, which really exacerbates the syncopation tendency in performers. ====================================================================== END REPOST That fact that you'd later in the day assert that I don't play music with anything but uniform meter pretty much demonstrates that you didn't read that post (or didn't read it carefully). So, it seems to me that, taken as a whole, I've talked a lot about context, and the only way you can say I didn't is by ignoring the most substantial posts I made early in the discussion today. > I'm glad you do in fact believe that context matters, and that there > are exceptional cases that are not merely the products of ignorance or > borderline incompetence, but there was absolutely no way anyone could > be reasonably expected to infer that from your initial posts. Do you still say that when you look at all of these posts (I've only one, my intial reply to Chris)? > You've since clarified (repeatedly, I know) and I think we are now > more or less in agreement on this. I think I was clear from the beginning and you weren't paying close attention. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
